Never again
by Ophium
Summary: Set shortly after the episode 'On the job'. Danny finds himself dealing with more trouble than what he signed in for... If you're not in the mood for bad language, read no further
1. Prologue

The construction site was quiet at that time of the night, as quiet as any place could be in a big city. The moon was half full, but between the tall buildings and the harsh street lights, little of its glow shone upon the solitary figure walking amongst the abandoned machinery and debris.

Some dog howled in the distance, momentarily distracting the man from his task. He looked around, heavy coat draped across his broad shoulders, lapel hiding almost all of his face.

He wasn't jumpy, just being cautious. Being jumpy implied a sense of fear, and that sentiment he had abandoned a long time ago, along with compassion and remorse.

The dark night is the territory of terror, and most people with half a good sense in their minds would have never chose that construction site for a walk, not even by day. A man had been killed there, not a week ago, causing the temporary closure of the place.

The certainty that no one would dare to venture there had served him perfectly, for what he was looking for was not to be seen by any eyes, except his and the ones that hired him.

Sure steps led him towards a pile of closed bags. Sand, or plaster, or some other component waiting to use in adding another concrete monster to the city. He didn't care. What he was looking for was nested between the third and the fourth bag.

Reaching with a gloved hand, the man's fingers closed around a thin package. 'A vanilla envelop,' the man thought. 'How original'

He knew that he should wait until reaching a more private place before he opened the envelop, but curiosity was one of the traits of his personality that he had yet to shake. Sometimes it helped him in his work, others... not so much.

Breaking the glue seal, the man tilted the package, watching as two glossy pictures and a sheet of white paper slide in to view. A young man with rectangular glasses and short cropped hair was staring right at him in the first one. The second was of the same man, walking in to one of the city's police stations.

'So they want me to waste some cop,' the man accessed his new assignment, carefully storing the envelop and its contents in the right pocket of his coat. 'I can do that'.


	2. Chapter 1

8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8oo8o8o8o8oo8o8o8o8o8o8

"Hey, Danny! Wait up!"

Danny Messer stopped with his hand on the door handle, for one second pondering what were his chances of pretending that he hadn't heard and ignore the call. Considering them too slim, he turned to face Don Flack.

"Hey Don," the answer came out of his mouth as automatic and flat as an ATM receipt.

The taller man in front of him met his eyes for a moment before the blue gaze settled on the thin red line of healing skin in the CSI's forehead.

"Heard you're back in business," he said, shuffling his feet like a nervous school boy.

Their last conversation had been less than friendly, ending with Danny storming out of the coffee place like a blazing hurricane and leaving him to face the stares of all the patrons seating around.

"I never left," Danny said, trying to lighten the situation in spite of how close he had come to lose his job over the all mess with the Minhas shooting. "I was just going for a bite. You wanna come?"

The change of topic was not lost on the policeman.

"Yeah... I… no, Mac just got a call. Someone spotted a floater in the Harlem River. He wants us to check it out."

Danny looked surprised. After their last talk, he figured Mac would not only take him out of the promotion grid, as most likely put him to work as second in some minor cases. He guessed that a human body blown out of proportions in a neighbourhood like that was probably as far as Mac's devious sense of revenge went.

"There goes lunch," he said, leading the way towards the department cars. At least Mac was assigning him work… even if it was in the Bronx.

8o8o8o8o8o8oo8o8o8o8o8

The body was male, or at least it didn't look female at first glance. Little of what made it look human was left, not after spending some time in the water, and whatever clothes had survived the pollution and fish bites, were of no help either.

Danny was squatting by the river side, carefully searching for any clues that might have washed away with the body. There was nothing to be found.

"He could've been dumped anywhere alongside the shore," he sighed, his knees popping as he raised.

Accepting the helping hand from his friend, the CSI climbed out the slippery slope that let to the water and neared the inflated body.

With glove protected fingers, he probed the victim's pants, searching for any ID. He found his wallet in the back pocket.

"Trevor Mils," he said, clearing the water from the plastic driver's card. "45 years old, NY native."

Flack's pencil scribbled rapid notes on his notepad, one eye on the writing, the other following the Danny's ministrations of the body.

"There's some bruising on the wrists," he said, pulling the wet sleeve up to see how far the dark purple marks went. Seeing that they stopped just short of the wrist bone he moved to the next logical place. "Same pattern bruising on the ankles."

"So, this guy was pretty tied up." Flack concluded.

Danny's gaze returned to the river.

"What ever it was, he had one hell of a rough time before even hitting the water."


	3. Chapter 2

8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8

Stella consciously slowed her pace has she neared the man she'd been looking for. Danny Messer was daydreaming in front of his computer, and for the nth time she wandered if Mac had done the right thing when he allowed the young man back to work so soon after what had happened.

It was nothing short of every cop's worst nightmare, to accidentally shoot another police officer. The fact that said police officer had been linked to some dubious connections and business while working undercover, did little to diminish the whole dogma surrounding the thing.

Even if he didn't say anything about it, Stella knew that Danny was being the butt's end of some humourless jokes and harsh comments over what had went through in that subway station; mainly from Minhas colleagues and freshmen police officers that hadn't bother to get their facts straight.

The IAB's investigation could clear him for duty all they wanted, but rumours and bad-mouthing would take a hell of a long time more to disappear. Adding that to the guy's family somewhat dark history, she was sure this was not being easy on him and that his eagerness to return to active duty was just his way to prove them all wrong. Including Mac.

She couldn't say that she blamed Mac for the dressing down he'd gave Danny; she just wasn't sure if that was the right way to deal with him. It had to be difficult for Taylor, being the marine at core that he couldn't shake out of his personality, to deal with a guy that heard his orders as suggestions and would, more times than few, deal with things in his manner, completely ignoring the older man. And it had to be particularly painful for a guy like Mac, who, even preaching that only evidence should be followed, prided himself of having some pretty good instincts, to be proven so completely wrong.

His instincts had told him that, despite the warnings, Messer was a competent guy. Evidence was telling him that he had trusted his instincts at the wrong time.

"Earth to Messer, you are clear to land on platform 12," she said, ruffling his gelled up hair.

Danny blinked, looking dumbly at the computer screen, as if wandering why it was taking to him. The familiar hand on his head made him turn to face Stella.

"Hey Stell, what's up?"

"Hawkes paged you, but you didn't answer… he send me as his private pigeon."

He looked at his waist, finding the pager's casing empty.

"Ah… the battery was down, so I let it charging at the reception," he mumbled, mentally slapping himself because he knew he should've requested another one for the time being. "What did he want?"

"Something about your floater… he's waiting for you downstairs."

Just then the computer blinked an annoying red message of 'no matches found', or as most CSI's phrased it 'go bark at another tree'.

"Looking for something in particular?" She asked, recognizing the programme as NYPD's missing people database.

"The floater, Trevor Mils. Wanted to see if anyone had report him missing," he said, abandoning the computer.

"Guess not," she said in a sad tone, wandering if Trevor even had anyone to miss him. NY was a city of lonely people, and everyday they learned that those were the best victims.

"Guess not," Danny agreed, knowing what was on her mind.

8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o

"What took you so long?" The dark skinned CME said from under the florescent light bulb when he saw Danny rounding the corner.

As usually, the CSI's first action when arriving at the highly lightened autopsy room was to take off his glasses to clean up the lenses. Apparently the dirt in them was like old bruises… it only came out under harsh light.

"Well hello you too!" Danny delivered the sarcastic reply while replacing his now clean spectacles. Sheldon Hawkes really was a nice guy, but sometimes he could be just a tiny little bit over the edge enthusiastic. "What's the rush? Is the guy alive or something?"

"Or something," the medic said, a smile playing on his lips that told all about the excitement he was feeling over his discovery. "You are not gonna believe this."

With a flick of the thumb he switched the lights off, replacing the white light for a blue glow that lent the entire place a weary feeing.

"Holy shit!"

"Told you!" Sheldon smirked, knowing exactly what the young man's reaction would be.

Turned with his face down, the body of Trevor Mils lay over the cold autopsy table in all its naked glory, his ample back directly under the blue light source, revealing what the normal spectral light hadn't been able to. Written in bruises it was easy to read 'COP KILLER', running horizontally from the man's neck to his butt.

"You better get a bigger light source, Hawkes," Mac's voice startled them, coming from the other end.

The medic was about to ask why when he realize what Mac meant. Two of the other bodies lying face down on the autopsy room had the exact same pattern all over them.


	4. Chapter 3

"So, it's a serial killer," Aiden stated as she studied the six pictures on the table.

After discovering five more bodies with the same characteristics as Danny's DB, Mac had called in the whole team to work on what was now officially the biggest case in the entire city.

"It would seem that way," he said, his gaze held by the words printed on each of the victims' backs. Six pairs of black bruises with the accusation 'cop killer' stared back at him, urging him to understand their true meaning. "So let's see how far we can go before the feds arrive to play in our turf. What do we know about them?"

Stella started from the left and grabbed the pictures of the two DB's she'd been working on.

"Margaret Stuton, age 47 and Xavier Stuton, age 48," she said, holding the glossy pictures of the couple. "Married for twenty five years. A neighbour that was supposed to have lunch with them yesterday found them dead, seating on their living room's couch. Restriction marks, similar to the ones Danny found on Trevor were present on both bodies. COD so far is being pegged as strangulation, but we're still waiting on the autopsy results."

Aiden grabbed the new two pictures, hers and Mac's case, another couple.

"Samantha and Louis Emmertton, age 46 and 49, married for fifteen years. The uniforms passing down the old TA Bridge reported a parked car. The bodies were found inside, seated on the front seats, seat belts on. The marks on both wrists and ankles are consistent with both Trevor Mils and the Stutons. COD is yet to determine."

Flack grabbed the next picture, belaying what the CSI working the case had told him.

"Female DB, middle age, found in a dumpster in a corner between the 166th Street and Broadway. COD was a single blow to the head. She'd been lying downstairs for three days, waiting to be IDed."

Danny grabbed the last picture.

"Trevor Mils, age 45, found in the Harlem River, just pass Spuyten Duyvil Creek. COD is yet to be determined, but Sheldon was leaning towards heart failure. If it weren't for the rope marks, it had natural cause written all over it. He was trying to catch any lingering cyanosis in the fingertips when the UV light caught the bruising on the back and…" he trailed off when he spotted the blond man in a suit staring at him from the doorway of the common room. "You liking the show or should we just refund you the ticket money?"

All four heads turned to the door, spotting the intruder to their meeting. Mac took the lead. "Can we help you?" He asked in a deceiving cordial tone.

"I'm sorry… I must've come across a little stalk-ish," the man apologized, even though everyone in that room, experienced with interrogations, knew he wasn't being sincere. "My name is Donauh, John Donauh. I'm with the Bureau," he said, offering a hand to greet Mac. "They send me over to help out in your investigation."

"Damn… that was fast," Aiden let out between closed teeth.


	5. Chapter 4

"If I remember it clearly, my report said that the information was, at this point, insufficient to make that sort of assumptions," Mac said, suspicious of the FBI's lightning speed response. They were fast, but damn, that was almost clairvoyance.

Donauh snorted.

"Detective… Tayler, is it?" He tried to confirm. When Mac didn't correct, he went on, "You aren't new to this game. The minute you report six bodies lying in your morgue that _might_'ve been killed by the same MO, you know red flags jumped up in all sorts of places. Mine was just one of them."

Mac's look upon the man did little to disguise what he thought about the game and red flags. He knew that, in theory, they were working for the same result, but previous experiences had taught him the hard way that more often than not, department prides and personal feelings came in to play, completely ruining any chances of solving the cases.

"We're all on the same side, detective," the man said, guessing Mac's thoughts. "I promise I won't stand in the way of your forensic investigation. My only function in here is to help your team to catch this guy before he kills again."

Mac could almost believe him.

8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8

"This isn't making any sense!" A frustrated Danny said to no one in particular, leaning back from his computer stool. He took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes.

Mac had decided that each would continue to run with the DB's they'd been initially assigned to, crossing references and information when ever something important came up. But, so far, all of them had had little to 'show-and-tell' to the rest of the class.

"What?" Aiden, seated on the stool next to him, asked. She rolled her chair closer to look at his computer screen. It was opened in the VICAP's page. "No hits?"

"Too many," he sighed, "but none close enough to our guy. I mean, we have three different COD's in six victims, plus one that died of natural causes but that could've easily be caused by fear. In my book, such a wide spread of MO' suggests there is either more than one killer or one killer highly experienced, right?"

Aiden nodded. The same ideas had already run through her mind as well.

"Right. We have the Emmerttons, who died of punctured heart; the Stutons who were strangled; our Jane Doe from Broadway who died from blunt force trauma and Mills, whose heart failed."

It was Danny's time to nod. All of them knew the six victims' cases by heart now.

"Now, if we're looking at more than one killer, and VICAP's data base is showing me at least a hundred MO's to each of those patterns, then why the same markings and words written in bruises on the victims backs?"

Aiden could only shrug. She had no idea.

"The one killer theory is, however, inconsistent with a serial killer's usual MO. They prime themselves for following a pattern, perfecting their technique and use it in every one of their victims. So, if this is a serial killer we're dealing with, why is his killing method all over the place?"

"Exactly," Danny beamed her a smile, happy to see their brains working on the same page. "There is a third option…"

Aiden noticed his hesitation.

"But?"

"But it's just a hunch, so I'll seat on it for a while," he finished lamely, having learn his lesson about following his instinct over the evidences. He hit a button on the keyboard to start a new search.

"Too bad that the ones with the best info are all lined up downstairs, not breathing." Aiden said, patting his shoulder and returning to her computer.

"We've just got lucky, kids," Flack said, entering the room with a satisfied smile.

"And by 'we', you mean you, right?" Danny said, turning away from the frustrating computer once again.

Flack 'whipped' his friend's head with the report he was carrying before placing it on top of the table, between the two CSI's.

"Our Jane Doe ain't Doe no more."

Two hands flew to open the file, eager to know if this was the one piece of information that would allow them to move forward in their investigation. Flack saved them the trouble.

"Her name was Barbara Ramirez, age 50, mother of one Orson Ramirez, age 8. We ran her DNA on CODIS and had a hit by association. Her brother, Raul Ramirez, is doing time for car theft. Her mother had reported her missing two days ago."

Aiden ran a hand through her long hair.

"As she been contact?"

"Yeah, Stella was on it. Left her on the phone and came to give you guys the news."

"And what do we have on Miss Ramirez?"

"Not much, like the others. Respectful, law obeying single mother. Worked at a hospital in Manhattan, paid her bills and lived her life quietly, as far as we can tell so far," Flack said, opening his note book even though he had already memorized all the details that were necessary.

"So, we're more or less where we started, right?" Danny asked, returning his glasses to his face and turning towards the computer.

No one answered him. There was no need.


	6. Police report

Author's note: for those of you interested, this is a list of what the police and the CSI team knows thus far in the investigation (which is the same as saying that this is what I know, and you'll find out if you read the next lines). Enjoy! And review! Please…

Police report

(Cases number 2006190 to 2006195)

Case number 2006190: previous Jane Doe, ID'd Barbara Ramirez, age 50

º Found in a dumpster between the 166th Street and Broadway, near her working place

º Single mother, with a child of 8 years old, Orson Ramirez

º Rope burn marks on both wrists and ankles, suggesting that she was bound hand and feet prior to death

º Sexual assault kit was run. Results were negative

º Distinctive pattern of bruising across the back horizontally, spelling the words 'cop' and 'killer'

º COD was severe head trauma with collapse of the occipital bone. Head wound suggests blunt object

º Blood work shows trace of diazepam in a non-lethal doze

º Both she and son lived with her mother in East Elmhurst, Queens (just west of Jackson Heights)

º She worked in the New York-Presbyterian Hospital as an aid. Her superiors never had any complain about her in the ten years she worked there. Victim was known for showing up to her shifts on time every single day. They found it odd when she missed work for two days without saying anything

º Her mother reported her missing 24 hours after her last shift, when she didn't returned home

º ID was made by approximation. Her brother, Raul Ramirez, convicted for car theft, is doing the second year of a four years sentence in the Lakeview Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility. CODIS found a hit on his DNA. The mother confirmed ID

The victim had no criminal record

Case number 2006191: Xavier Stuton, age 48

º Found in his house, seated beside his wife of 25 years, Margaret Stuton, on the living room couch

º Rope burn marks on both wrists and ankles, suggesting that he was bound hand and feet prior to death

º Distinctive pattern of bruising across the back horizontally, spelling the words 'cop' and 'killer'

º COD was asphyxia by strangulation. The victim had additional rope marks around the neck as well as petechial haemorrhage of the eyes' surrounding tissue

º TOD shows that he was killed prior to his wife

º Blood work shows trace of diazepam in a non-lethal doze

º He was a financial consulter. Worked for a company (Petterson and Petterson, Consulting Partners) with an office in Kew Gardens, Queens

º Lived in Jackson Heights, Queens. House showed no signs of breaking and entering. The neighbours didn't heard anything suspicious

º The neighbour who found them, Sylvia Norton, stated that she had last spoken with both victims in the previous night, when they arranged for their lunch together. When none answered her calls, she used the spare key they had given her, and let herself in

º His car was found near the office, unlocked. Prints collected match only to the victim's

º Record of two parking tickets, both paid for in the allotted time

Case number 2006192: Margaret Stuton, age 47

º Found in her house, seated beside her husband of 25 years, Xavier Stuton, on the living room couch

º Rope burn marks on both wrists and ankles, suggesting that she was bound hand and feet prior to death

º Sexual assault kit was run. Results were negative

º Distinctive pattern of bruising across the back horizontally, spelling the words 'cop' and 'killer'

º COD was asphyxia by strangulation. The victim had additional rope marks around the neck as well as petechial haemorrhage of the eyes' surrounding tissue, same as the husband

º Blood work shows trace of diazepam in a non-lethal doze

º She was a dentist. Worked in a private health center in Manhattanville

º Lived in Jackson Heights, Queens.

º Her car was parked in front of the house. Prints collected from the steering wheel match only to the victim

º No criminal record

Case number 2006193: Trevor Mills, age 45

º Found floating in the Harlem River, just pass Spuyten Duyvil Creek

º COD was heart failure. Blood work points to a massive amount of adrenalin in the victim's blood stream at TOD, potentially aggravating a pre-existent heart condition

º Rope burn marks on both wrists and ankles, suggesting that he was bound hand and feet, prior to death

º Distinctive pattern of bruising across the back horizontally, spelling the words 'cop' and 'killer'

º Needle track marks in the ankles suggest history of drug abuse, though none was found in his blood at TOD

º His wallet, with cash and all of his credit cards accounted for, was found in the back pocket of the victim's pants, ruling out robbery

º Lived alone in Kensington, Brooklyn. The house was a passed down from his parents.

º Profession: lawyer, with an office in Queens

º Car was found parked outside his office, suggesting that he was kidnapped outside the office building or at his office and then taken to an undetermined area

º No criminal record

Case number 2006194: Louis Emmertton, age 49

º Found with his wife of 15 years, Samantha Emmertton, inside the couple's car, parked in the Third Avenue Bridge

º Seatbelt had been fastened around the victim, peri-mortem

º Rope burn marks on both wrists and ankles, suggesting that he was bound hand and feet, prior to death

º Distinctive pattern of bruising across the back horizontally, spelling the words 'cop' and 'killer'

º COD was single pounture wound to the heart, with rupture of the pericardium, causing massive internal bleeding, sugesting that the killer had some kowledge of human anatomy. The external wound was almost nonexistent and the place of dead would present little to no signs of blood

ºThe car was possibly the place of murder. The few drops of blood found at the scene, forming a vertical pattern from the victim's chest to his waist, were consistent with the victim' seated position when he was stabbed. Lividity of inferior members indicated that he was not moved after TOD

º TOD indicates that Louis Emmertton died prior to his wife

º Murder weapon should be stiletto-like, sharp and with a small diameter. It was possibly used to kill his wife and then taken by the killer

º Blood work shows trace of diazepam in a non-lethal doze, suggesting that he was unconscious when placed at the car

º Lived in Riverdale, Bronx

º Both he and wife were teachers at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, an art school in Riverdale

º The house had no been breached, sugesting that the couple was attacked in the path to or from home to school. The car with both victims was found in the morning and neither missed their classes the previous day, leading to believe that the attack came after them leaving their work place

º No traces of a third party were found at the car

º Victim had no criminal record

Case number 2006195: Samantha Emmertton, age 46

º Found with her husband of 15 years, Louis Emmertton, inside the couple's car, parked in the Third Avenue Bridge

º Seatbelt had been fastened around the vitim, peri-mortem

º Rope burn marks on both wrists and ankles, suggesting that she was bound hand and feet

º Sexual assault kit was run. Results were negative

º Distinctive pattern of bruising across the back horizontally, spelling the words 'cop' and 'killer'

º COD was single pounture wound to the heart, with rupture of the pericardium, causing massive internal bleeding (see Louis Emmertton's report)

º The car was possibly the place of murder. The few drops of blood found at the scene, forming a vertical pardon from the victim's chest to her waist, were consistent with the victim' seated position when she was stabbed. Lividity of inferior members indicated that she was not moved after TOD

º Blood work shows trace of diazepam in a non-lethal doze, suggesting that she was unconscious when placed at the car

º Lived in Riverdale, Bronx

º Both she and husband were teachers at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, an art school in Riverdale

º No criminal record


	7. Chapter 5

8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8

Outside his window, the city's landscape had changed to darker colours, outlined by the orange glow of the setting sun.

Mac's office's glass wall bared the fruits of the whole team's afternoon labours. Written in neat handwrite from top to bottom were all the findings that they had so far on all of their victims, which, he was forced to admit, were not much. Arrows and circles connected the victims in every point that he could found in common, but too many areas were still blanks.

In his hand was a printed map of NY City divided in to its five boroughs. Only Staten Island was free of coloured crosses.

He checked his facts once more.

No links could be found in the victims professional lives. Ramirez worked at a hospital as medical aid; Xavier Stuton was a financial consultant; his wife was a dentist; both Emmettons were teachers and Mills was a lawyer.

Their age group was somewhat close, but crossing their school records had come out empty; perhaps they had some hobbies in common? Frequented the same places? That played out for the Stutons, the Emmertons and even Mills, but Ramirez was of a different social status, which left her out of the same circuits.

Geographically was where Mac could see more connections, faint as they were.

Two of the victims, the Emmertons, lived in the Bronx; three other victims, the Stutons and Ramirez, lived in Queens, near each other; Mills lived in Brooklyn, but his office was in Queens. So, other than the Emmertons, all victims had a connection to Queens.

He grabbed a red marker and used a free space to write 'go back to the Stutons' murder scene in Jackson's Heights, Queens'. It was a pale connection, but still worthy of checking out more carefully.

According to Sheldon and his team, who had finally succeeded in finishing all six autopsies, Mills had died first.

He had a history of drug abuse, but was currently clean. His heart, however, had resented his years of cocaine use and had not resisted the strain of being kidnapped and beaten. His blood was the only one without traces of diazepam, which told Mac that the killer had learned to sedate his victims after what had happened to Mills. He wanted to kill them himself, not have them die of fear.

Ramirez had died second, on the same night that Mills, five hours apart, four nights ago. Did the killer had the sedative with him all along and only decided to use it after Mills, or did he stop between killings to arrange it? Valium is prescription only drug. Did he take it from Ramirez's hospital?

The Stutons and the Emmerttons had died on the same night, three nights after Mills and Ramirez. The Stutons were the last to die but their autopsies are the only ones with evidence of dehydration and starvation, indicating prolonged captivity, which leads to believe that they were captured first, perhaps even before the first two deaths.

There was, of course, the phone conversation with Sylvia Norton, their neighbour, on the night that they died, but that proved only that they were alive at that point, not that they were free from harm.

Then, there were the disposal sites. All of the victims, except Ramirez, had been left in various spots of the Bronx area. Comfort zone? Perhaps the area that the killer knows best, having lived or worked there before?

Mac rubbed his head. This case wasn't making much sense to him, and he was sure that his team was having the same problem. From his office he could see most of the working stations, but none of his team was in view. He knew that they were all working in one or another of the different labs scattered around the CSI's headquarters, but he doubt that they were getting anywhere. This guy knew what he was doing. This wasn't the first time he killed.

Not a single print had been found in all of the crime scenes, the killer most certainly had been wearing gloves, but that much Mac had already expected. These days it was very rare to find a usable print on murder cases like these, premeditate, pondered and thought through. Only with passion crimes and really dumb perps did they get lucky with print finding and, he sadly admitted, dumb perps were thinning in numbers.

What he was finding frustrating and less expected was the absence of any other trace. Not a shoe print, fibber, hair, nothing had been found in all three crime scenes, and the place where Mills had been tossed in to the water hadn't even been found.

No epithelials on the ropes found around the Stutons necks either. The ropes used to tie all the victims, as well as the stiletto weapon used to kill the Emmerttons and the blunt object used to kill Ramirez, were yet to be found.

What they needed was to find the primary crime scene, he knew. The Emmertons had been killed in their car, but the bruising had been made somewhere else. Same thing with Ramirez. She had died from a single blow, which wouldn't have bled too much, meaning she could've been killed in that ally or somewhere else. But the bruising? That kind of precise pattern required some time to do; time the killer did not had in a public place. Mac could bet that the place they were looking for was somewhere between Queens and the Bronx.

He looked at his own handwriting, telling himself that he needed to go back to the Stutons' house. His eyes refocused from near to far as he saw the FBI agent making his way towards his office.

He knew he shouldn't have, that it might come out as lack of trust from the NYPD in the bureau, but Mac hopped that his friend at the bureau's HQ in Washington would be as discrete as Mac had asked him to be. Donauh seemed genuinely interested in helping them and as far as Mac could tell, there was nothing wrong with the man. Still, it didn't hurt if his friend could come up with some information on the FBI's agent. Just in case.

"Officer Donauh," he greeted formally as the man stepped in to his office. "Something I can do to help you?"

"The right question is, is there something I have that can help you," the man said with a smile, a smile that betrayed his satisfaction for knowing something that the CSI headman apparently, did not. "The answer is yes."

"What do you have?" Mac asked, not in mood for games.

The other man took his time before answering, carefully reading Mac's writings on the glass wall. "Impressive."

"It's what my team here does," Mac said, reciting the sentence for the nth time. Some people had a hard time understanding the concept of team work. What was on that wall was the sum of the conclusions all of them had been working hard to find.

"Well, my team has arrived at some interesting conclusions themselves," Donauh said, taking a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. "I knew that your team would be focusing on the forensic part of the scenario, so I asked them to work something else."

Mac sat behind his desk, waiting until the man decided to divulge whatever information that had brought him there. If the man's delay in telling it was any indication, it was something big.

"One of your officer's was involved in a shoot out less than a week ago, am I right?"

Mac blinked. The question had caught him completely off guard.

"What does that have to do with this case?"

"Apparently, everything," the man said mysteriously, taking a seat in front of Mac's desk. "A cop was killed in the shooting, right?"

Mac's eyes hardened to the consistence of steel.

"It's obvious you already have your facts, my confirmation is not needed. So, I ask again, what does this have to do with the case?"

The FBI agent sighed, looking almost sorry for what he was about to say. He looked at the written wall again before answering Mac.

"I see that your team found little connection points between the victims, but that you did notice the proximity in age in them. We have a team whose single function is to find patterns and hidden messages in things just like these. They analysed the victims' information and organized them in various forms. One particular organization led to an interesting discovery," he said, handing the printed paper to Mac.

Mac unfolded the white paper and read. In it were two rows of names, the six victims. In the first row they were listed in full name, organized by ages, going from Mills, the youngest, to Ramirez, the oldest. The reason why Donauh's team had found that order interesting was made brutally apparent when Mac read the second list, where only the last names were listed.

The pattern was burned in his retina. There was no denying it.

Mills, 45 years

Emmertton, 46 years

Stuton, 47 years

Stuton, 48 years

Emmertton, 49

Ramirez, 50 years

"If you look only at the initials, it spells,…" Donauh started to say when Mac took too long to react.

"Messer," the CSI finished automatically, his mind already racing with all the possibilities and ramifications of this finding.

"Yes," Donauh said, leaning back on his chair. "And, no matter how innocent he is on the matter, he did kill a cop."

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Thank you all for the reviews so far. Keep on reviewing, and I'll keep on writing ;)


	8. Chapter 6

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"Danny did not kill Minhas," Stella stated, her green gaze daring Mac to say otherwise. In her hand was the printed paper that Donauh had brought them. Mac had closed the curtains, sealing his office from view of the rest of the lab.

"I know that," he said, meeting her eyes long enough for her to see the sincerity of his words. "That is not what's at stake here."

Stella looked pass the boss and faced her friend. Mac looked tired. With everything that had been going on lately, she doubted he had seen the inside of his apartment the past three days. And she knew that she was reacting emotionally when Mac needed her to be rational, a good sign that she was tired too.

"Have you shown this to Danny yet?"

Mac sighed. He was aware of the mental stress the young man had been under for the last few days, since the Minhas' shooting and, like Stella, he knew that that story hadn't completely died with the end of the IAB's investigation. Working in a closed environment as the NYPD network of police stations was sometimes more harmful than helpful. This was one of those times.

"No, I wanted your opinion on it first. What does this tell you?" He asked, pointing to the incriminating piece of paper in the woman's hand.

"Well, let's pretend for a moment here that Danny is a total stranger and see what this information tells us under those circumstances," she said, taking a deep breathe. "We have a killer that has obviously chosen his victims to pass along a message."

"Yes, but what exactly is he trying to tell us?" Mac pondered. A number of theories had already crossed his mind. What he now needed was to cross them with Stella's theories on the matter. Somewhere in between, they would be closer to their psychopath.

"He's trying to get our attention. The bruising markings on the victims' backs are like brands, undeletable signs of a committed sin. He's accusing us of letting Danny walk out after shooting a cop? Maybe one of Minhas colleagues or a former partner?"

"You think that this might be the work of someone in the force?"

"You don't?"

Mac didn't answer her. They both knew that being a policemen didn't meant that they were above mistake or that their moral values were better than anyone's else. It just meant that, for them, the law was not only something to be respected but also the reason why they got up in the morning to go to work. It was their work.

But the former marine knew that everybody failed and everybody had his/hers personal boogieman, waiting to play on their weaknesses and break them. For a police officer to do something like this to affect another one, he would have to be broken pretty badly.

Mac looked at the files on top of his desk. Danny's work for the past five years. They would have to go over all of them, see if any of the perps that Danny had helped to put away was out and seeking blood. The options were just too many…

"The way I see it, this is either someone targeting Danny, seeking out revenge, or…"

"Or?"

Mac met her eyes, relying on their years of working together to know that she would get there on her own. Looking closely, he could see the second that understanding came to her. Her eyes turned to slits and she seemed to double in size.

"You can't be seriously considering that!"

"I'm not considering anything at this point, Stella! But you know as well as I that we have to cover every possibility. We have six unrelated victims, none of which shows a single sign of having fought their attacker. Now, that tell us that, either they all knew the killer, something that evidence shows us to be unlikely, or that the killer was someone that they would implicitly trust…"

"Like a cop," Stella said, knowing where he was going with this. "I agree with you on that point, but Danny is probably the only cop in this city that wouldn't do it. What would be the sense of killing six people whose last name would spell his name?"

"We've seen stranger," Mac said. "And, like I said, we have to consider every possibility."

Every gut feeling inside his body was telling him that Danny was innocent, just one more victim in all of this. A deeper sense, something that somewhere along his years as a marine had become a part of him and had taught him when to duck even when the enemy was invisible, was telling him something more disturbing. Danny was in danger and the longer they took to catch this guy, the closer that danger became.

"And in the mean time?"

"We pursuit every piece of evidence we have so far, we go over our previous findings all over again, and you and I are going back to the Stutons' house."

Stella nodded, her hands smoothing the wrinkles her anger had imprinted on the crumpled paper. She handed it back to Mac.

"And Danny?"

"Danny's off the case. I'll order him home and get a uniform to watch him." Mac said. When he saw the accusatory look on Stella face, he realized she had misunderstood him. "For protection, Stella," he clarified. "If this is someone trying to get to Danny, I want to make sure he fails."

"Danny will not be happy," Stella said. Danny's Italian-tempered reactions were no strangers to any of them.

"I know," Mac said. "Tell him I need to talk to him, will you?"

Stella nodded as she made her way out. Danny wouldn't be happy at all.

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	9. Chapter 7

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"Come on, Mac! Don't do this to me!" Danny said. It was not a plea; it was the simple manifestation of his disbelief.

The New Yorker's thick accent became thicker when he was upset or angry. Mac couldn't decide which it was now. Maybe both.

When he had showed the list to the younger man, Mac could see the colour literally draining from Danny's tanned face. The implications had not been lost on him. Someone out there truly believed that Danny was responsible for officer Minhas'death. The fact that that someone was a killer psychopath made no difference.

Then, like someone who has just learned to be affected by a terminal disease, he had gone in to denial.

"You're basing your entire decision on one piece of paper, Mac! I mean, for all we know, this could be just a coincidence!"

Unfortunately, Mac's mantra was well known by all working with him. The words 'there are no coincidences' came to his mind in his boss's voice, mentally slapping him in to submission.

"I can still stay here," Danny offered, trying to keep the despair out of his voice. "I can help out in the lab…"

Mac, who'd been silently waiting for Danny to vent all of his frustration and anger, looked up at the troubled blue eyes.

"You know I can't allow that," he explained. "Your name's implicated in this. Your mere presence in the lab at this point could jeopardise the entire investigation."

Danny's anger got control of him once more.

"That's bullshit, and you know it!"

Mac looked outside his office, noticing the number of heads that had turned at Danny' shouting words. Then he looked at Danny. The man was red-faced, embarrassed by his outburst.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "That was out of line."

But it was too late. Mac's face had lost all signs of sympathy. The friend was gone and only the boss remained.

"I want you to go home and stay there until told other wise, is that clear?" He asked, trying not to sound like a drill sergeant. "We'll continue the investigation and keep you upraised of any significant discovery."

Danny just nodded, the will to fight all but gone from his body.

"I've given instructions for an unmarked police car to stand watch to your apartment building," Mac said. "It's for your protection only, so don't give them any reason to be chasing you all over town, ok?"

The anger was back, this time fuelled by a deep sense of betrayal. Mac would never say it, but he knew he was a suspect. He would always be a suspect. No one can escape their own history. "Sure," he whispered. "Anything else?"

Mac wanted to tell him to be careful, to do as he was being told and stay home. To not do things his way and go after the killer on his own, to not get himself killed. But he didn't. The younger man had to prove that, if anything of good had come out of the whole Minhas shooting, was that he should learn to trust others.

"No, you can go."

Danny left the lab head down, avoiding the questioning looks of each and everyone of his colleagues.

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	10. Chapter 8

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By the time he entered his apartment, Danny was seeing nothing but red. He banged the door closed with such force that one of the paintings hanging nearest jumped off the wall and crashed in to the floor.

"Great! That's just fucking great!" He said, making no move to pick it off the ground.

He stormed in to his bed room. The shades were down almost all the way, filling the space with punctured lines of street light that stretched over his unmade bed and closet doors. He couldn't remember if he had left them that way because it had been too late in the night or too early in the morning to get them up the last time he had been there.

His glasses went flying from his face to land on the tussled sheets, in a well practiced gesture that had cost him more than one set of lenses.

He kicked his shoes away next, using one as leverage to take the other out, exactly the way his mother had always told him not to and pulled the clothing off his body with more force than necessary. His shirt bore the brute of his anger when, faced with too many buttons, he just ripped it open, broken buttons flying around him.

"Fuck!"

He knew he needed to calm down, or otherwise his things might not survive the onslaught of his anger. But try as he might, he couldn't stop his head from replaying the afternoon's events over and over again.

When she had come to see him, he knew, just by looking at Stella's grave face, that whatever Mac wanted to tell him would not be good. By the time he had entered his boss' office, he was sure it was something positively bad.

Mac had the same expression on his face that Danny's father used to have when he was about to reprehend one of his boys.

Danny punched the bathroom's door open and stepped in to the shower. 'Never again' he had sworn to himself, he had promised Mac. But here he was again, with a bull's eye smacked across his ass, being hung to dry.

Someone was out there to get him, a serial killer, a wacko, a sick maniac that left accusations in dead bodies' backs and, instead of letting him help catch the lunatic, Mac had send him home, like he was still five years old, being grounded!

He turned the hot water on full force, bending his head so that the spray fell over his tense back. The spray wasn't strong enough to ease his muscles, and hot water wasn't working at cooling him down at all, he realized, turning the tap to cold instead.

His breathe caught in his throat as soon as the freezing water hit his skin. How could he have forgotten that it was the middle of the winter?

"Stupid, Messer," he talked to himself. "That was really stupid."

He quickly washed himself, his mind far from the task as his hands worked through familiar gestures.

The NYPD's psychologist, the one he had been forced to see three days after the shooting, had told him that it was normal to close his eyes and see Minhas face, dead, staring at him in accusation. That it was normal to feel sick to his stomach when ever he touched his weapon. In time, she had said, all of that would be absorbed by his mind and rationalized in to a comprehensive response. Whatever that meant.

He hadn't been really listening, he admitted. The only reason he had stepped in that office of beige walls and weird pictures hanging from them was to get his mandatory evaluation and to return to his job as soon as possible. He needed to be doing his job so that he could prove to himself and the others that he could do it, that he wasn't incompetent. Because, deep down, he knew he had failed.

A gun is a lethal weapon, a piece of metal built with the single purpose of killing. Being a policeman meant that he was allowed to use one, but not allowed to use it wrongly. 'You confirm your target, you make sure you can hit the target and you take down the target!'

The sentence had been yelled in to his ears so many times that it might as well be tattooed in to his brain. He knew it by heart, he'd learned to respect it,… and all of that had gone out the proverbial window when his life had been at risk. He had reacted, not acted like he was supposed to.

He had managed to take down the target, but he had failed on the first two points, the two points that made sure he didn't kill any innocents.

'Confirm your target…. Make sure you can hit the target…'

Danny looked down at his soaped filled hands. He hadn't killed that man, he intellectually knew that, but he also knew that it hadn't been because of his training and professionalism. No.

He hadn't killed that man because he'd been lucky.

And now his luck had run out, because someone out there had found him guilty and was making sure that no one would ever forget what had happened in that subway station.

The sudden realization made him feel weak at the knees. This was exactly why he didn't want to stay home. You think too much at home, you start analyzing stuff that was better left unanalyzed.

With a hand on the wet wall for support, Danny stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. Wrapping it around his waist, so that his front building neighbours wouldn't accuse him of exhibitionism, he went to the wide window in his living room. Down there, parked on the main street, between two street lamps, was the police car Mac had warned him about. It was as inconspicuous as a flamingo amongst a herd of zebras, but he guessed that was because he'd learned to 'smell' police surveillance cars since a very young age. He had grown up with them. He couldn't seem to shake them off.

The policemen inside that car were supposedly there to keep him safe. Looking at the solitary car in his street he felt more vulnerable than ever.

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	11. Chapter 9

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Jackson Heights didn't felt like NY at all. It lacked the busy streets with people pilling one over the other, always rushing to get somewhere. It lacked the smell of spicy food and hot dog's onions frying in the open. It lacked the noise of a hundred people talking on their cell phones; a hundred cars trying to beat the heavy traffic and getting no where, exhaustion tubes coughing in to the air in revenge for being jammed.

Jackson Heights seemed even, in fact, not to belong to this century at all.

Mac and Stella were driving down the historical part of the neighbourhood, heading for the Stutons' house. The majority of houses in that particular street were of English looking architecture, three stores high with flower-covered front yards and pool decks at the back. Not the kind of home you'd find in the suburbs. It was the kind of home that only people with lots of money could afford to have.

"Not even the rich are safe," Stella commented, driving Mac's attention away from the road.

'No, apparently not,' he silently agreed, flipping the signalling light and turning the steering wheel right to park in front of the correct house.

Although their car was not identified as Crime Lab Unit, the few heads that peaked at the nearby windows, knew that they were there because of the Stutons' murder.

The whole neighbourhood had been horrified that something like that could've happened there, literally at their doorstep. Knowing that evil and disaster could so easily enter in to their homes and prey upon them left people feeling unsafe. On a place where until recently parents were unafraid for their children playing outside after dark, the streets were now deserted.

Mac wouldn't be surprise to learn that some of them were already looking for another place to live.

"You do know that I've already been through this crime scene twice," Stella reminded him as they exited the car and ducked under the yellow ribbon signalling the place as off limits.

"I know," Mac said, using his pocket knife to cut the police' stamp sealing the door.

"And you've already rechecked my findings," she went on, turning her flash light on.

"I know."

A second beam of light cut through the darkness.

"So, what are we doing here exactly?" The woman asked, pointing her flash light randomly over the deserted home.

"I don't know," Mac confessed.

Stella's flash light pointed directly in to his face.

"You don't know!" She didn't sound happy.

"We missed something, Stella," he finally admitted.

The beam of light left his eyes and returned to the empty house's walls.

"Well, let's find it… what ever it is," she simply said, slipping on a pair of latex gloves and moving on to the living room.

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Nothing had been moved or cleaned, not even a window had been opened to air the house, not while the police maintained the place status as a crime scene, which meant the smell of death was still in the air. Only, instead of staying circumspect to the area where the bodies had been found, it had now moved to involve the whole house.

Mac and Stella had long ago grown accustomed to that smell, well enough to ignore it as non existent. They meticulously went over every single surface and object on the house, focusing on the living room and the paths from there to everywhere in the house.

Nothing seemed out of place, nothing was out of context, just the house of two people that had just got up day, never knowing that it would be their last.

"I've got nothing," Stella admitted after three hours of non stop analyses. "Mac?"

The older man had stopped, lost in thought. When he moved, he had smile on his face. He knew what they had missed.

"Sylvia Norton claims that she phoned the Stutons on the night they died, right?"

"Yes, around 9 pm, according to her phone record," Stella said, even though she knew she wasn't given him any information. This was just their way of juggling ideas.

"Did you see a phone anywhere in the house?"

"No."

"Did Sylvia say anything about calling them AT the house, or was she referring to a cell phone?"

Stella mentally reviewed the other woman's testimony.

"She didn't. But her phone record tells us that she was calling a cell phone, registered under Margaret Stuton."

"So the Stutons may have not been at home when she talked to them?"

Stella nodded. They she realized it too.

"And no cell phones were found near or on the bodies of the Stutons…"

"Meaning that our missing cell phone is probably still at our primary crime scene!"

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	12. Chapter 10

Danny couldn't sleep. He turned on his double sized bed, facing the door this time. The slow motion passage of time on his digital clock was getting on his nerves, so he had turned. The door wasn't much of a view either.

His blurry vision didn't allow for many details, but he knew his own furniture well. None of it was new.

Next to the door was a leather armchair, though little of the black leather could be seen. His discarded clothes and bed cover were pilled in a mess over it.

Next to the chair was a small table, the sole propose of it being to support a small CD player and columns. He rarely used it, preferring the more potent sound of the living room set, but most of his girlfriends seemed to find the idea of music in the bedroom… romantic.

He turned to face the clock again.

02:45

After calling a sandwich of canned tuna and a beer dinner, Danny had considered calling his current girlfriend, invite her over, and take his mind off business for a pleasant couple of hours. He thought better of it. He wasn't in the mood to talk with anyone.

02:46

Don had called around eleven, asking how he was, making sure that he wouldn't be doing anything stupid this time.

Aiden had called two hours later, knowing that at 1 Am he would still be up. No much was happening with the case, but she wanted him to know that Mac and Stella had gone back to one of the crime scenes to recheck something. She wanted to make sure that he would call her back if he needed anything, or any one to talk to.

He hadn't even picked it up, just listened to their voices as they spoke to the answering machine.

02:47

He tossed the covers aside, annoyed by his insomnia. He should be in the lab; he should be in the street, working to put whoever had done those murders behind bars. Not here, listening to Ms. Newman maniac cleaning spree at almost three in the morning.

Forbidden to work on the case as he might be, he couldn't command his own head to stop going over every detail that they had processed at the time he had left.

The victims had nothing in common, and now he knew why. They were picked randomly, probably from something as harmless as phone book. Picked solemnly to spell his damn name!

Who would go to such extend just to pass on a message?

The theory of a serial killer came to his mind again, and again he put it aside for lack of sense. A serial killer bent on sending a message of… what? Revenge? Justice? Why not just kill him and be done with it?

He'd dealt with serial killers before. Not many times, he was glad to admit, but some. The concept that they were insane was a common mistake, one that he had stop making in his rookie years.

Insanity was trying to understand them. They functioned with a very particular set of rules, their own rights and wrongs. The problem usually was that their rights clashed with the majority of society. Things like violently kill a number of people in a number of sadistic ways were highly frown upon these days. Go figure!

But one thing that serial killers didn't do was change their MO so drastically from crime to crime. They might, occasionally, change a detail or another, so that no one caught them before they were done. They never changed the entire scenario. That was their mark; that was their legacy.

This one wasn't worried with any of that. This one killed differently, he used different methods, he took advantage of his surroundings and he favoured murder weapons that left no trace.

The one theory that Danny had hesitated to share with Aiden jumped to the front of his thoughts once again. Could this be the work of a professional hit man?

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Mac and Stella were back at the lab. It was late in the night, or early in the morning, depending on the depressing point of view of whoever was still working at those hours.

The crime lab never truly stopped, it just had slower hours. Three in the morning was just that.

They went directly to the multimedia lab, hopping to find someone there. The blond head of Rubben, the barely out of high school computer wiz kid that worked the night shifts to pay for university, was hunched over the table supporting a series of working computers.

Mac shook him awake. The kid blinked, recognized him and looked amazingly unaffected by the fact that he'd been caught sleeping on the job.

"Well if it isn't THE MAN himself, paying a visit to us poor underpaid peasants in the cellar," Rubben said in his usual greeting to any detective that chose to visit his lab in person, instead of demanding results over the phone. "What can I do to help you, Detectives Tayler and Bonasera?"

"We need you to trace a cell phone," Stella told him, already handing a piece of paper with Margaret's number on it. "We don't know if it' still on, but if it is, battery may be dying."

"So you need it fast," he guessed, his hands already on the keyboard, assessing the communications mainframe. "So, has anyone ever told you that your name it's Italian for good nig…"

"Many times Rub," Stella cut his sentence, her eyes never leaving the computer screen. She could feel the warmth coming from Mac' shoulder, standing right beside her, waiting. "Can you get a connection?"

"Ok, I get it… shut up and work," he said, inserting the phone number on the trace programme. "It's ringing."

Stella was holding her breathe. Ridiculous, she knew, but a physical reaction that she could not avoid. However, if their luck held on for just enough time for them to get a lock…

"Got it!" Rubben announced with enthusiasm. The computer in front of him was showing a detailed view of the city. A white dot was blinking in Queens. "Jackson Heights, number 82. A basement of some sort, by the looks of it. I'm getting a weak signal."

Mac looked at Stella, a smile on his lips.

"Sylvia Nortons lives in number 90. The Stutons lived on number 84."

"So, who lives in number 82?" Stella wondered out loud.

"Let's find out," Mac said, already half out the lab. "I'll call Flack, tell him to get us a warrant."

"I'll get Aiden," Stella said, following him.

Neither heard the sarcastic 'you're welcome' shout coming from the multimedia lab.

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	13. Chapter 11

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The car was parked a good distance away from the main entrance, but the driver still had a perfect view of anyone coming in or coming out of the building.

A couple of hours ago, when the Messer guy had come out venting hot air, the driver had allowed himself a small moment of satisfaction. His plan was on the move.

He would be the first to admit that, this time, his work was being a bit more elaborated than his usual hits, but the person who had hired him had specific demands that he needed to see to. To answer those requests he had needed a different plan, a jigsaw plan in which every piece of the puzzle had to not only fit the design, but also fit it with an exact timing, as he had planned.

He hadn't become one of the best in what he did by being sloppy. Detail was everything, in this or any other business.

Besides, this time he was dealing with people that were particularly dangerous to him, people who dedicated themselves to find the errors in his work; the evidence that could put him behind bars. He had to be extra careful if he didn't want this job to be his last.

When Taylor and Bonasera had left minutes after Messer he hadn't bother to follow them. This wasn't it yet.

The driver wondered how long it would take them to find it. They were supposed to be one of the best CSI teams. He wondered if he had left enough clues behind.

Like always, after accepting a new hit and being given his first payment, the driver would take his time to investigate the target. Life style, good habits, bad habits, usual hangouts, past history, family, the works.

This guy, Messer, had little to no personal life. Little contact with family, less than a hand-full of connections outside work and the occasional girlfriend that wouldn't last more than a week. His life was his work and he apparently lived for it.

Especially after what had happened last week. The whole being under investigation for possible shoot of a police officer had been heaven sent for the driver. It had provided with the perfect peep hole through which he could start messing with Messer.

The driver smirked at his own choice of words, coughing the cigar' smoke that had scratched his throat. The increase number of people coming out of the police station caught his attention.

Taylor, Bonasera and the Burn came down the stairs with an air of urgency about them. While the women opened the trunk of one of the cars and stored their field kits inside, Tayler met with Flack and two uniformed policemen, coming from the opposite direction. They talked briefly, their smoky breaths pinpointing each sentence, before going their separate ways. Tayler opened the driver' seat and joined the women inside the car.

Flack, followed by the uniforms, went back to his own car and accelerated after the CSI's speeding car. The whole exchange hadn't lasted more than one minute.

'This is it,' the hidden driver told himself. With unrushed movements, he man dragged one last smoke out of his cigar and threw the butt out the open car window. This time he would be going after them, but he didn't need to hurry, he didn't even need to follow them. He knew exactly where they were going.

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So, again, I feel the need to ask you people… please review! Your kind messages are my only way to know if anyone is enjoying this.


	14. Chapter 12

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Aiden hide a yawn, seated in the back seat of the car. Up front, Mac and Stella were silent, already focused on the job ahead.

She'd been going over the Emmerttons' car again, hoping to catch something new. Stella had called her to go with them when she was just finishing up.

With each new piece of information that they managed to gather, their view of the crime and the crime scenes changed. She knew that was why Mac and Stella had returned to the Stutons house; that had been why she had felt drawn to the car again.

Standing alone in the lab's garage, she had tried to imagine the Emmerttons, drugged, beaten and finally stabbed to death inside their own car. She had imagined herself in Samantha Emmertton shoes, watching her husband die, knowing that she would die next and being helpless to do anything about it.

The blood stains in the front seats had already dried up. Her initial swabs had confirmed that it was the victims' blood and no one else's. She had expected as much.

The seatbelts, which had been fastened around the dead bodies, had no prints on them other then the Emmerttons, but she had expected that as well. No one planned something like this and then forgot to wear gloves.

The steering wheel was covered with Louis's Emmertton's prints, but most of them were smeared, like he'd been grabbing the wheel with excessive force.

'Or gloved hands used the wheel after him'. She didn't expect the victim to be able to drive his own car in the condition he was then. The killer must have driven them to the bridge and then killed them.

Then she had noticed it. The smell had always been there, but only now had it registered as out of context. There was a distinct smell of cigarette' smoke lingering in the driver' seat's leather. A smell that had a ring of familiarity to her.

She had quickly checked all her previous notes. The ash tray in the car had been empty when it had been brought in and the Emmerttons had no visible signs of being smokers. Their friends and colleagues at school had confirmed that much.

Aiden had felt like jumping up and down to celebrate her discovery. If the Emmerttons didn't smoke, then the smell must've belonged to the last person driving that car, the killer. If she could match the composition of that smoke to a particular brand, they would be a step closer to him.

She had shared her discovery with Stella on their way to meet Mac, thinking that whatever they needed her for, she would be of more use at the lab, pursuing her lead. The news that they might have discovered the original crime scene had erased all thoughts of staying from her mind.

If they could nail this guy before this night was over…

Street lights passed outside the car window at a speed that she wasn't quiet sure to be within speed limits. Mac was wasting no time in getting them back to Jackson Heights. Not wanting to think about the dangers of seating in a car diving at that speed, her mind turned to Danny instead. In the end, this was all about him.

They were only doing their job, she was aware of that, but no one could deny the sense of urgency, the extra time and passion all of them were throwing in to solving this case. Danny could be in danger, and that meant that none of them would stop until he was safe.

She had thought him to be utterly obnoxious when they had met. Cute, but too full of himself; smartass with no real smart behind it; funny, but in all the wrongs ways. She had gotten to know him better after that and her view of the man had slowly changed for the better after a time. Now he was the nearest thing she had to a brother and she couldn't stand to watching him go through all of this.

When she had called him earlier in the night, she knew that he'd been home; she knew that he was awake. He was just being stubborn and refusing to pick up the phone.

She hadn't taken it personally because she knew this was his usual way to deal with _stuff_, the heavy stuff. Small things, like complaining about the weather, or his neighbours, or some driver that had crossed his path on his way to work, small things he could whine about for hours, sometimes days. The big things, the ones that truly left him hurt and in need of talking, he would clamp up, shut his friends out and deal with whatever was on his own. Sometimes he would talk to Flack, sometimes he would talk to her. Most times none of them could get through.

To her, Danny's reactions were textbook inflated male ego, made worse by growing up the way he had, in the places he had. Bad habits that she would love to knock out of him.

Aiden looked at her watch; the glowing numbers showed just fifteen minutes pass four in the morning.

Daniel Messer could clamp all he wanted, but she was still going by his house first thing in the morning. Maybe bring him a fresh box of brownies, as a peace offering.

"We're here," Mac announced, parking in front of the number 82 in Jackson Heights.

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That's it for tonight. Enjoy your reading!


	15. Chapter 13

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It was so late in the night, that even the street dogs were asleep. A few crickets, lost amidst the green carpets in the surrounding gardens, provided a background sound that, other than here, was rarely heard in the city.

One of the street lamps quietly buzzed against the night's chill, blinking twice before dying a quiet death.

"Damn cold," Aiden mumbled against her overcoat, as the six of them made their way towards the empty house.

They had left the cars' head lights on, to provide for a better view of the place. With the potent lamps on her back, she could see only the silhouetted figures of the others.

In the dilapidated grass in the front yard, a wooden post with the words 'for sale' written in red, stood slightly askew.

"House belonged to a nutcase named Patrick Rice," Flack whispered to the CSIs as he fished his pocket for the key that the real estate agency had provided him with. "The old man died nearly ten years ago and they still haven't managed to sell the house. People say it's haunted," he finished lamely as the rusty front door opened.

"You sure you wanna do this, Flack?" Aiden teased him, remembering his dislike for ghosts from a case a few months ago.

"Very funny, Aiden," he said, releasing the holster of his gun and holding it up. "Really funny. Maybe the funny lady should go first?" He invited her with a stretched hand.

She knew he was just messing with her. Flack was a professional, which meant that he would never let a 'lab cop' do his job for him.

Sure enough, even before she could reply, Flack and the other two policemen had taken point and venture inside the dark house.

"We'll check upstairs," Flack warned the CSIs as they joined them inside, guns pointing straight ahead, following their eye line.

Mac nodded, his eyes already searching the few rooms that where visible to him from the hall. He waited as the detective and the two uniforms climbed the two sets of stairs to the second floor, before the three of them started to secure the main floor.

For the next ten minutes, shouts of 'clear' sounded from various locations inside the big house. When it was made obvious that there was no one in there beside them, Flack left the two police officers covering both entrances to the house, one up front and one in the kitchen's back door, while he and the rest proceeded towards their main goal, the basement. According to Rubben, that was probably where the cell phone would be.

None believed that they would be as lucky as catching the perp inside the house, but they were all experienced enough to not take any chances. Communicating only through their eyes and hands, the four detectives quietly opened the door to the basement, the only way in or out of the place. If their guy was in there, this was the moment where he would panic and make his move.

This time Mac took point. Between his experience in the marines and the fact that he was the boss, Flack didn't even thought about contesting the decision.

The older CSI held his gun in a straight angle in front of his chest, right hand gently gripping the handle, index finger relaxed against the outer rim of the trigger. His left hand, supporting from beneath, held the flash light in the same angle of the gun. Flack, right behind him, was pointing his flash light on the stairway steps.

From a strategic point of view, Mac hated this sort of situation. They had to get down there, but they were seating ducks until they reached the bottom of the stairs. The wall running down the left side of the staircase was their only protection.

A faint scuffling sound to their right made both detectives turn at the same time, beam lights crossing the pitch black dark beneath them and both weapons aimed at the source of the noise. The 'guilty' rats that had been frightened by their sudden arrival were caught in the light for one second before scattering away in to hiding. Flack smiled, relaxing his trigger finger. 'Better rats than ghosts', he thought. Rats he could shoot.

Finally Mac's shoe hit cement instead of wood, signalling the end of the stairs. He quickly stood to one side, making room for Flack to stand beside him.

When the gunshot sound that he'd been waiting to hear didn't materialize and two beams of light circled the division and found it empty of other living beings, Mac called the rest of the team down. Both women didn't look happy at being left behind, but none had said a word. They understood Mac's reasoning. It was unnecessary to risk the whole team.

Four beams of white light travelled through the basement, their holders all coming to the same conclusion. This place had long been abandoned.

The room had obviously been used as storage and laundry room when the house was in use. Now, ten years later, the skeleton of an old washing machine; a black box of rusty iron that had probably been the house's boiler and a variety of junk covered most of the walls and floor of the large division.

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"This isn't our crime scene," Mac stated the obvious for all to hear. They all knew it as soon as they saw the place, but still the words carried a lot of disappointment with them.

The layer of dust covering the harsh cement floor was, for the most part, undisturbed. It would've been impossible for the killer to bring six people to that space and held them there as he made the marks on their backs.

He had no place where to hold them either. There were a couple of wooden beams on the ceiling, but they were so eaten away by old age that there was no way they could've support a human body.

"Anyone found the phone yet?" Stella asked, pulling hers from her pocket. Three heads nodded in negative and she quickly dialled Margaret's number.

In the silence that formed between them and the dusty basement, the soft initial accords of Sting's 'Englishman in New York' sounded awkward and out of place.

Stella had to smile. Margaret Stuton had good taste in music.

Once broken the spell, they all moved at the same time, frenetically searching for the ringing phone. They knew that an average cell phone battery would last up to five days, if not used. Margaret had use that phone two nights ago and neither of them could know how low that battery could be running at this point. They needed to find it, fast.

"Got it!" Aiden called from behind the stairs. She picked it up using a fresh latex glove. Not wasting time to put it on, she had just used the latex as a napkin.

The glowing screen showed NYPD in bold letters, confirming to them that this was indeed the right phone. Stella hit the end call button on her cell phone and the music suddenly stopped.

"Bag it," Mac told Aiden. "We'll process it later at the lab."

Burn did just that and joined the others searching the room. Suddenly the place held a lot more promise, now that they had confirmed that Margaret Stuton had been there before dying. Now they just needed to find the evidence that would lead them to the killer.

Mac remained behind the stairs. He pointed his flash light up, looking at the spaces between steps. The slits separating them were too narrow.

If Margaret had dropped her phone while coming down, it would've landed either out in the open, to the right of the staircase or at the bottom of the stairs. For it to be behind the stairs meant that she, or the killer, would've had to contour the stairs and move to the space he was in now. Mac wondered why either of them would walk in to a dead end.

He looked around. The space was narrow, with nothing more than the construction ramp that supported the stairway above, the wall that ran alongside the stairs and the back wall, which met the other one at a 90 degree angle.

Mac took a step back, pulled his pants a notch up and crouched, looking at the floor more closely. The cement in that area was almost dust free, inconsistent with the rest of the place. He pointed the light beam at the back wall. Nothing there.

Then he saw the dust. Besides the dirt dropping from beneath the staircase, there was a distinct wall of dust that rose from the ground. His flash light slowly travelled along the brick wall, until the dust stop. Carefully moving around, Mac found two more, one at each end of the first one, in a straight angle, forming three sides of a box.

"Found something," he called to the others.

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	16. Chapter 14

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The car was the same, but now it was parked on the same street where the Stutons used to live. The man inside was also the same, only now he was eating a hot dog.

He had taken his time to get there, knowing that they wouldn't immediately find it. Some things could not be rushed.

This time he had parked further away. He didn't need to get too close. The signal from the camera he had left hidden in the basement of number 82 had a fair amount of reach and from where he stood, it was working just fine.

In front of him, on top of the black dashboard, was a small portable TV set. The man took a bite of his hot dog and watched the grainy black and white image of the four detectives in the basement of the house. Taylor had looked directly at the camera and had failed to see it.

The driver smiled. They were good, but he was better. The device was well hidden.

He patiently watched as Taylor found the edges of the trap door and, with Flack's help, raised it from the floor, revealing the hidden chamber and the bunker's entrance. On the silent screen there was a moment of silence, while the four of them discussed their next move, the man guessed. He had no sound, so he had to imagine their dialogue.

The detectives looked like those actors from old days' movies, the black and white ones, before sound. He was almost expecting to see the image be cut away and briefly replaced by a lines card, cluing in the audience on the words being said.

He could read in their expressions when a decision had been reached. The women, in particular, had very expressive faces. He could see that they were excited with Mac's discovery and that they wanted to further explore. Still, underneath the shiny eyes beaming with promises of solving the case, there was an underline concern, a suspicion in the air.

The man inside the car laughed. Wouldn't that be ultimate irony… his whole plan, ruined by female intuition.

He put that concern aside. They were after all, at this point, pondering weather or not to go inside a dark hole in the ground. That would give anyone pause for thought.

Then he saw the tall detective talk briefly on his radio, probably informing the men posted above about what they were doing. They were going in.

The man tossed the rest of his uneaten hot-dog out the window, cleaned his hands on a paper napkin and reached inside his pocket for a cell phone. On his TV screen, Taylor disappeared down the hole first, only his hands visible as the older woman handed him one of the large silver cases containing their field kits. She lowered herself next down the ladder. Burn followed her, while Flack stood watching them from above.

The man waited a couple of minutes, hoping that the remaining man would go down as well. When it became apparent that Flack wouldn't move, the driver pressed a series of numbers on his phone and hit the call button.

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Standing outside the hole, Don's heart threatened to jump outside his chest when Margaret's phone started to ring again.

It took him a second to locate it, standing on top of Aiden's field kit case inside a bag, time enough for the radio signal to travel from the cell phone to the device hidden in the bunker's opening. Flack moved closer to look at the phone' screen to find out who was calling the dead woman.

The signal triggered a small explosion that raised more dust than it did damage. When Flack recovered from the scare and the dust settle enough for him to see, it was already too late.

The phone's battery had finally died and the bunker's opening was now sealed shut, with no way of opening it from outside.

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	17. Chapter 15

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Danny started awake, his heart racing madly inside his chest and a rush of adrenaline running through his body. For a second he sat on his bed, feeling light-headed and clueless about what had awoken him so suddenly.

Then he heard it again. Someone was pounding at his door.

He reached for his glasses on the night stand and looked at the watch.

05:05. He'd barely slept for an hour.

Three more hard knocks on his door. Whoever it was, it was beating his door in such way that he could hear the metal hinges tingling, one step away from falling off.

"Hold your freakin' horses!" He shouted, even though he knew the person at the door on the other end of his apartment wouldn't be able to hear him.

Opening his eyes over-wide, to stop them from gluing back together, Danny finally rose from his bed, adjusting the waist of his pajama bottoms. He closed his eyes and clicked the bedroom's ceiling lamp on, slowly opening them to adjust to the light.

The person at the door had finally taken a rest. Now more alert, Danny wondered who would have the nerve to come to his house at five in the morning. Aiden and Flack would die a painful death if this was their idea of a social call.

On his way to the front door, clicking on lights as he went by, his eyes fell on one of his kitchen's drawers. The one next to the fridge, top drawer.

His service gun had stayed at the lab, as he was officially on stand down and would have no need for it. If the need presented itself, Mac knew that he had a personal weapon, which he kept home.

Danny stopped on his way to open the door and went in to the kitchen instead. He opened the drawer and look at the gun.

He always kept it with the safety on and loaded. He lived alone; there was little risk of it going off in the wrong hands.

For a moment he considered taking it with him, just in case. But, as his hand reached for the weapon, Minhas' face came to haunt him once again, dead eyes unblinking, staring at him in accusation. A man shot by his trigger-happy finger.

He dropped the piece like it had burned him and looked at his hand. It was shaking.

Danny closed the drawer and took a deep breath. This had to stop soon.

It was always worst during the night, when the brain went in to recess and replayed all the stored memories. His brain seemed particularly sadistic, as it seemed only to focus on the memories he whished to forget.

The banging on the door resumed, propelling him in to action.

"Who ever you are, you'd better have a very good reason to be pounding on my door at this freakin' hour!" He complained as he looked out the peep hole.

On the other side of the door, looking slightly distraught, was that agent the FBI had sent to help them.

He tried to remember his name. Donauh… something.

Danny wondered what the man could possibly want with him that early in the morning.

"Daniel Messer, open up, please," he asked, looking directly at the peep hole. "There's been an accident."

The FBI agent heard the door's lock turning and seconds later he was facing the worried face of the young man.

"What happened?" Danny asked, inviting the other man inside. The small part of his brain that never left work, noticed that the man had a ketchup stain on his coat and that he was carrying a black knapsack.

When he turned to close the door, the only warning he had that something was not right was that odd chill at the back of his neck. Then there was the intense pain inside his head and nothing else.

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Need I say it? Ok, I'll say it: review!


	18. Chapter 16

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It took Mac a single breathe inside the place for him to know that they had found their main crime scene.

Human fear leaves behind a distinct smell that can't be mistaken for anything else. It's not always there and it doesn't occur with any kind of fear. In fact, only one kind of fear leaves behind a mark like that.

Fear of death.

Pointing his flash light towards the opening as Stella and Aiden made their way down, Mac could see that they had felt it too. The trill of discovery had been toned down and a sudden sense of respect and grief for those who had suffered in there was clear in both faces.

"This is where he brought them," Stella whispered, overwhelmed by the silent screams of the murder's victims.

The three of them spread their flash lights to get a better look at the place. They stood in what appeared to be an entering chamber, from where a larger division could be accessed. The pitch black they'd all been expecting was soften by a moody green neon light, coming from an emergency lamp with the words 'exit' beaming in white.

"What is this place?" Aiden asked, looking at concrete walls with family pictures hanging from them.

In the larger room there was some furniture adorning the place, but what ever few pieces there were, they had long passed their prime.

A pale brown couch lay against one of the walls, the pale being more due to the layer of dust covering it than actual colour. There were some sheets folded on top of it, probably to lay open a bed if there was the need.

On the opposite wall was a wooden table, dark from old age. Its current use was more as bookcase than anything else, filled as it was with papers and dusty books.

In front of the table there were four chairs, all turned with their backs to the table, like the front seats of some bizarre show about to begin. It was very dark, but they could still see the ropes dangling from the chairs' arms and legs.

On the opposite side from where they stood there were two narrow doors. Mac gently pushed them open, revealing a small bathroom and a storage room, both empty and smelly.

"It's a bunker," Mac supplied, having already guessed what the place was when he'd saw the reforced steel of the opening shaft. "These things were a success during the cold war years. Safe houses completely sealed off from the outer world, with independent air supply and power generators that promised to last for decades. "

Stella just shook her head. Those years of cloth and dagger suspicion and hostility were long gone by the time she was born, but the fact that people could be that fearful about a nuclear attack that they would blindly close themselves inside these concrete tombs left her utterly confuse. Had they truly believed that they could survive any potential radiation threat trapped in there?

"Found the light switch," she announced, flicking it open.

The blast at the door was more heard than felt, as the tick walls shielded them completely from the small explosion.

Stella looked at the dangling naked lamp on the ceiling and coughed against the dust raised in the air.

"That wasn't me, right?"

It wasn't the right time to answer such question. They had all recognized the muffled sound of an explosive device going off at the door. What ever had triggered it, they would worry about later, out in the open.

Hastily making their way to the entry room, the sight that greeted them was something worthy of the worst of horror flicks.

The steel door had closed shut with the force of the explosion and, where before had stood the turning wheel to pry it open, now stood twisted metal that showed no promise of ever functioning again.

"This ain't good," Aiden growled, blowing her dark bangs away from her eyes. She watched as Mac silently passed his flash light to Stella and climbed the ladder to the opening.

Hoping that the hatch had simply fallen shut, Mac placed both hands up and pushed against it. When it didn't move, he examined it more carefully and sighed. The trap door, unfortunately, had a security handle. Once closed, it locked automatically.

Testing the metal's temperature and finding it sustainable, the CSI tried to open the latch by turning the barely existent wheel instead. It didn't budge an inch.

"We're trapped," he was forced to admit.

Stella's eyes focused on him like laser beams.

"This place is an antique… we can't be trapped."

"Built to last decades," Aiden said sarcastically. Of all the advertisements, this had to be the honest one.

"Flack is still outside," Mac reminded them.

Looking up, he could just imagine the younger man looking the opposite way, probably wondering if they were alright.

"Pass me one of those flash lights," he asked Stella.

Figuring that the steel door and the walls would be too thick for his voice to be heard, Mac chose the next best thing.

"Morse code," Stella said with a smile when she recognized the thump, thump sounds that Mac was doing against the steel. "Think Don will understand it?"

"I hope so," Mac said, never interrupting his coded message, "or else his years as Boy Scout would've been a waste."

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	19. Chapter 17

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It felt like his brain had been replaced by a bag of cotton. And some bird was trying to pick it apart. With a very sharp beak.

Danny carefully opened his eyes, not knowing what he would find, but certain before hand that he wouldn't be enjoying it.

The only thing he could focus on, before the sharp pain inside his head forced him to close his eyes again, was wood. His kitchen table, by the looks of it.

He was seating up, barely, slumped against the table, his face laying on the polished surface. Beneath the table top, tied with something that was tickling his wrists, were his hands, growing numb from the position they were in.

The knowledge that he was restrained, and at the mercy of whoever had bounded him, was enough for the CSI to swallow the bile inside his throat and convince himself that he needed to get his eyes to open again.

His back muscles complained when he raised his head from the table top and leaned back against the wooden chair. The dizziness didn't last long and when he felt that he could, more or less, coordinate his movements, he brought his bound hands to rest on the table, unconsciously moving his fingers to get some feeling back.

Danny coughed against the gag in his mouth, part from the cloth's wool feel, pressed against his tongue, part from surprise, when he opened his eyes and understood why the bounds around his wrists were tickling him.

It was some sort of cuffs, but instead of the metal ones he usually carried while on work, these were made of some sort of red tissue, with feathers and lace decorating it.

Lots of red feathers.

Lots of red lace.

Something you would find in any sex shop worthy of the name.

"Don't worry, you're not my type," a male voice cut through Danny's grim thoughts. "They are, however, a very nice way of you keeping your hands where I want them, without leaving those nasty burn marks that rope and metal cuffs usually do."

Danny tried to focus on the face of the man seating in front of him, in the opposite end of the table. He knew who was talking; he could recognise the voice and general figure of the FBI agent that had come to his door; he just couldn't comprehend why on Earth the man was doing this to him.

His eyes fell on the objects lying on top of his table. Instead of yesterday's newspaper and the half eaten pack of chips that he had left there before going to bed, there now was a small portable TV set turned to face him, an unopened bottle of vodka whose label he couldn't really read, one of his kitchen knives and a digital camcorder, set on a tripod stand. A red light was blinking on the camera. It was recording. Him.

"I know this must be a tad confusing for you," the man said, leaning back in to his chair, relaxed, "but I really don't give a fuck about that."

The cotton inside Danny's head was gradually clearing up and he felt a sudden urge to leap out of his chair and break the face of the other man. Deep down, however, he knew that would be unwise.

He'd been unconscious for an unknown amount of time, so he had no idea if the man was alone or not; he couldn't see any weapon on him, but he had no way of knowing if the man was hiding one or not and, more disturbing that anything else to him, he had no idea what this man wanted with him.

The other man leaned casually over the table and clicked the TV set on. On the small screen, a black and white figure started moving.

"Here, let me help you," the other man said, rising from his chair, grabbing something from the kitchen counter and moving behind his prisoner.

Danny felt his own glasses being slipped over his nose and adjusted to his ears. The intimacy of the gesture made his anger boil harder. When he finally managed to focus his gaze on the image still playing on the TV, his anger rapidly cooled off to the point of making his blood run cold.

He could recognize Mac, Stella and Aiden, as they occasionally passed in front of the camera, moving around in some room he'd never seen before. The place seemed small, claustrophobic, without any windows in sight. They seemed busy, oblivious of the camera filming their every move.

From what he could tell, the camera was hidden behind some opaque surface from their end, see through surface from the camera's end, not unlike the mirrors they used in their interrogation rooms.

And what they couldn't see either, because it was hidden next to the camera, was the bomb's timer, large digital numbers showing minutes and seconds, ticking its way towards zero. It read 55:36 and showed no sign of stopping.

"Very well, Daniel," the man said, back in to his chair, chewing an apple, "now that I have your attention, this is what I want you to do."

Danny struggled to tear his eyes away from the TV set and stare at the man, his face looking directly at the recording camera.

"Tonight, before this tape reaches its end, in about" the man said, looking at his wrist watch, "55 minutes, you will commit suicide, or your friends will die."

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	20. Chapter 18

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Flack looked at his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. Dispatch had already been contact, help was on its way, but it still felt to him like they were wasting precious time. He knew that cutting a new hole in to the bunker would not be easy; it would be time consuming and slow paced and it would have no margin for error.

Thoughts of his friends' running out of air and dying, trapped on that blasted hole, circled non-stop inside his head. 'Think positive, Don. This is the twenty first century. They won't have to dig their way in… I hope'.

He would be the first to admit that he'd slightly panicked for those first few minutes before Mac contacted him. Divided between the knowledge that he would have to leave the scene to call for backup and gut wrenching need to determine if the others were still alive, the detective hadn't heard the thumping sound at first.

The hollowed metallic sounds reaching him from deep inside the floor had sounded surreal at first, like something straight out of Poe's Tell-Tale Heart, beating under the floor boards. Then he noticed the sequential cadence and rhythm of the bangs and finally recognized it.

The coded letters formed the sweetest sentence Flack had ever heard, telling him that everyone was ok.

He'd hastily banged a reply back at them and hurried outside, to get a rescue team on the way. Playing it on the safe side, he had taken the victim's cell phone with him and had called the bomb squad, just to be sure that there wouldn't be any more surprises.

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"Help is on its way," Mac informed the others as he joined them on the floor. "We might as well make ourselves comfortable… this will take a while."

Stella looked around, remembering why they had gone down there in the first place.

"I don't think we'll get bored."

Deciding to make the best out of the whole situation, the team of CSIs started to process the room, starting with the ladder's hand grips and swiping the whole place in overlapping circles.

With only one kit' supply for the three of them, each took charge of a separate task. There were prints to be found and dusted, every piece of furniture and surface had to be carefully analysed, in searched of any possible trace left behind by the killer or one of his victims.

Mac had stopped at the four chairs, keeping with him a large supply of evidence bags. If this was where the killer had restrained the victims, this was where he would find traces of them. The killer might've been careful enough to wear gloves and clean any trace of his person, but the victims wouldn't.

Crouching next to the first chair on the left, Mac's gaze fell on the parka coat beneath the table. Something bulged from its middle. Taking his cell phone from his pants, the CSI quickly snapped a shot of his finding, before sliding the grey material closer to him.

The sound of metal tingled from inside the folders of the coat.

"Think I found something," he warned the other two.

Aiden and Stella joined him as he opened the coat and revealed a car's antenna and a small portable fire extinguisher. More shots were taken, this time with Stella's phone.

The antenna's tip had been relieved of its flat point and a rusty coloured substance covered almost half of its length. Aiden already had a swab in her gloved hand, ready to determine if the substance was blood.

The linen portion of her swab turned bright pink when it reacted with it.

"It's blood," she concluded. "If this matches the Emmerttons DNA, we have our stiletto-like weapon."

"From the tip's configuration and radius, I say it might be," Stella said, grabbing the fire extinguisher. The blunt end of the powder bottle was dented.

Holding her flash light closer to the indentation she asked for a pair of unused tweezers. Closer to the kit, Aiden bagged the bloody antenna and passed the tweezers to Stella, who, biting the flash light between her teeth, was soon holding a dark curly hair between the plastic pincers.

"And if this matches Ramirez's DNA, we have our blunt object," she added with a smile.

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	21. Chapter 19

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Danny could only blink in reaction to the man's words. Had he it heard right?

The man disappeared from view for a few seconds and returned carrying his backpack. He pulled a silver coloured box from inside it. A green light was lit in one of its ends, next to a small antenna.

"These are the rules," he stated, adding the remote control to the rest of the objects on the table. "I am going to remove the gag from your mouth. If you scream for help, I press this little button," he said, pointing to a black circle on the center of the remote, "the bomb explodes and your friends die; if you try anything foolish, you better be fast about it, otherwise I press the button, and your friends die; you don't do as I tell you, when I tell, same consequences. Get it?"

Danny nodded slowly, his racing mind still trying to process everything that was going on. Who was this guy?

It was painfully obvious that he wasn't who he'd said to be. And even if he really was with the FBI, Danny highly doubted that the Bureau had any idea of what its agent's current activities were.

The scary thing was the calm and matter-of-fact way in which he spoke and acted. He wasn't nervous, he wasn't insecure about his actions; he wasn't even concerned about being caught. The man was cool and collected, even somewhat professional-like in his manners.

A jittery and nervous perp was a dangerous perp, but it was also the police's best leverage to catch them, because that was the state of mind where they made the biggest mistakes.

This guy seemed so much in control that Danny feared he might not get a chance to get the upper hand without taking some risks. Or maybe manage to bring him off balance.

The man, seeing the silent nod from his prisoner, rose from his chair and moved behind Danny.

"There," he said as the gag fell away. "Better now?" He asked in false concern. Folding the used cloth, the man placed it inside a plastic bag and stored it inside his backpack.

"You're one sick mother-fucker, aren't you?" Danny spit as soon as he felt his mouth free from the cloth.

The other man smirked. In two unhurried steps he was at the fridge.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" He said, taking out a bottle of cold water. "That way you'd have an explanation for my actions and then you'd be able to deal with me because, let's face it, you deal with mother-fuckers on daily basis."

Another two steps and he was standing next to his prisoner again.

"Me being a sick mother-fucker would bring you some security, wouldn't it?"

Danny gasped as the cold water from the bottle was dumped unceremoniously over his head and naked torso.

"What the hell was that for?" He snarled, trying to suppress a shiver.

The man didn't answer him. Moving through his prisoner's house like he's lived there for years, he stepped in to the living room and opened both windows. The sun would come up soon, but the air was still frosty from the night's cold.

From his chair, watching over the balcony serving both kitchen and living room, Danny saw the man's actions, wandering if he would have enough time to reach for the gun inside the kitchen's drawer. He looked at it, figuring his odds of succeeding and decided against it. It was his ace up the sleeve and he needed to play it just right.

Seconds later the man was back in to the kitchen, making a show of putting on his heavy coat. He picked the bottle of vodka and uncorked it, placing it nearer to Danny.

"The vodka is to be drunk," he ordered. "Between the cold and what you'll have to do, you'll thank me for that."

Next he picked up the knife, passing a finger through the blade, testing it' sharpness. When he spoke, his voice had taken a subtle change, like he was telling a bed time story.

"You're not a happy fellow, Daniel, and this past week's events have been the final straw that led you in to a nervous breakdown. You got home, mad at your boss, you got drunk and decided to kill yourself. Before you lost the ability to form coherent sentences, you typed a very heartfelt suicide note on your computer, saying good bye to your friends and family and giving a number of reasons why you couldn't bare to live any longer. You went in to your kitchen, opened a drawer and picked up a sharp knife, and you used it to cut your wrists open. Sad, isn't it?"

Danny looked at the goose bumps cursing through his arms. He wondered how much of that was due to the cold and how much was a reaction to the man's tone as he casually related his demise.

"Lovely story," he managed to reply sarcastically. "… And if I refuse to play your little charade?"

The man leaned over to look at the TV screen. The digital clock marked 45:15

"The timer reaches zero; your friends go bum!; you ruin my plans and my client's revenge and I kill you anyway," he said, raising one finger for each point he made. With the last one he stretched all five digits and used them to push to bottle closer to Danny.

"Tough, isn't it?"

Danny's eyes were looking at his friends' black and white picture, while he grabbed the bottle and took a gulp. "Very tough," he agreed.

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	22. Chapter 20

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The drilling sound was muffled by the thick walls, but it was still annoying. Aiden looked at her watch again and sighed.

5:30

She should be in bed.

She should be home.

The firemen rescue team had arrived some forty minutes before and, aware of the task ahead of them, they had come prepared.

The three people trapped inside the bunker had listened to the scuffling sounds as the heavy machinery was set up to the right of the former entrance, and soon a new hole was being cut in to the multilayered concrete. Figuring that it wouldn't be easy to breach the bunker's ceiling, the CSIs had returned to work.

Apart from the lack of fingerprints and hairs anywhere else in the bunker but the four chairs, the killer had shown little concern about the amount of evidence he had left behind.

Murder weapons had been left barely hidden from view; inside one of the many boxes inside the storage room, the CSIs had managed to find a roll of rope, half used; and two bottles of diazepam, bearing the label of the New York Presbyterian Hospital, confirming Mac' suspicions that the killer had indeed stolen them from Ramirez's workplace. Next to it was a grocery bag, an opened magnetic letters kit inside.

"The rope and pills I get… but why the toy letters?" Aiden asked, picking up a purple W.

Mac spread the letters on the floor.

"Notice the size and shape of the letters," he said, quickly selecting the letters he needed to prove his theory. "They are consistent with the bruises on the victims' backs and…"

He stepped back, leaving the words 'cop killer' written on the floor.

"He used them like stamps," Stella figured, grabbing one of the letters and pressing it against her palm. The faint mark took less than a second to disappear.

Aiden notice the metal pipe leaning against the wall and picked it up.

"Or maybe he used a little more force than that."

The W's magnet in her hand grabbed on to the metal of the pipe with ease. Pressing the letter against one of the cardboard boxes, she punched the other end of the pipe, leaving a clear W impression on the box.

The experiment would have to be retest in the lab, using a proper human skin substitute and taking accurate measurements of the amount of force needed to leave marks similar to the victims', but, under the circumstances, Mac and Stella both agreed with her.

"What I don't understand is why a guy that has managed to dump six bodies all over town, with out leaving a single clue behind, leaves a clue-feast place like this for us to find," Stella said, leaving the cluster confinements of the storage room and returning to the larger room.

"He didn't leave us this place, he led us to this place," Mac added, following her. "That cell phone was seating exactly on top of the entrance hatch. It was no coincidence that it'd fell there, it was place there."

Stella could feel the palm of her hands growing sweaty.

"You think this was all a set up, a trap?"

Mac rubbed his tired eyes, wishing this day to be over. Better yet, he wished that this day had never happened.

"That cell phone was the only lead we managed to follow on this case, and that cell phone led us straight here. Minutes after we descend, the hatch explodes, leaving us trapped here," Mac resumed, seating on the brown couch. "The killer was watching us somehow, there is no other way he could've known when to blow the hatch," he said, looking up at Stella.

The woman was looking at him, but he could tell she wasn't seeing him. Her eyes were unfocused, deep in thought.

"That explosion was too small to cause us harm, unless we were standing on the ladder," she voiced, putting her thoughts to work. "So the killer knew that we would eventually find all of this. To show this little concern about what we can learn about him from this bunker, he either wants us to get him or…"

"… or he made sure that we wouldn't be leaving here with any proves," Mac finished for her.

"He'd better have planned it right, because we got him," Aiden announced from the table, holding a file in her hand.

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	23. Chapter 21

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Flack paced around the available space surrounding the drill workers, feeling useless. More than once the firemen had tried to convince him to wait outside, but the detective refused to leave. He'd rather be there, feeling useless and impatient than outside, feeling useless and curious.

The top of a pack of cigarettes was peaking from the breast pocket of one of the workers. Flack had quit smoking some time ago. It hadn't been easy, but he was proud of himself for succeeding. Now all he could think about was having a smoke.

Deciding against going to the man and borrowing one, Flack turned around and started pacing again. The sound of the heavy drill was deafening this close so he, like everyone else down there, was wearing ear protection. It didn't manage to completely muffle the noise.

The bomb squad had arrived minutes after the firemen and had soon declared the place safe. Whatever device had exploded the bunker's shaft it was on the inside and there was little they could do before access to the bunker was provided.

Once everyone was sure that the place was safe enough to work, the firemen had moved in. They had taken some time to determine the place's stability and trying to figure out the best way to get inside the bunker. After some discussing and, taking advantage of the bomb squad's presence, it had been decided that a hole would be drilled in to the cemented floor and a small explosive charge would be placed inside, hopefully big enough to blow a new hole and contained enough to not bring the whole house on top of them.

The victim's cell phone and everything else the CSIs had managed to process before going inside the bunker had already been sent to the lab, but Flack doubted there would be any information coming out of that.

In his mind he kept replaying all the events that had led in to this situation, wondering if there was something he might've missed.

The ringing cell phone had been the probable trigger for the charge to go off, but someone outside that room would need to know when to ring the phone. The question running through his mind was how?

Flack didn't remember any car parked on the street, but the killer could've still have seen them arrive at the house, hidden somewhere. Flack had already set out a canvas search of the surrounding streets. Nothing had come up yet.

That, however, wouldn't tell him how the killer managed to have eyes inside that basement.

The expression 'eyes inside' got the detective thinking. Somewhere in that basement there probably was some sort of listening devise or a camera, maybe both.

He looked around. Between the mess of equipment brought in by the firemen and the mess that was already there from the previous owner, there was no way he would be able to find the surveillance equipment using his senses alone. The guys at the lab would have proper instruments to flush the thing out, but right now, without that technology at hand, Flack had a good idea how he could make the killer deaf and blind.

Glad for the long legs his genes had provided him with, Flack quickly made his way outside. It was a long shot, but worth of checking out.

The streets outside had lost the eerie feeling of a sleeping neighbourhood. Attracted by the sirens and circling blue and white lights flashing from the police and firemen department cars, people had started to gather beyond the barriers imposed by the yellow ribbons.

Two separate news stations had their vans parked at a distance and their reporters were struggling to catch a photo or a comment about what was happening. The presence of a car identified as belonging to the bomb squad had left everyone on the verge of panic and the ones that lived nearer were demanding to know what was going on.

Flack ignored the calls of 'Detective! Detective!' coming from the crowd. He had no idea how they did it, but the press seemed to always be on top of the situation, even when the situation was being kept under wraps. Sometimes he wandered if the NYPD shouldn't just hire them and save everyone else the trouble of avoiding the firing flashes.

He looked back, judging the distance between the house and what he was looking for, mentally organizing the structure of the house and the bunker to guide his steps. When he looked ahead again, a policeman who looked young enough to be in high school, was standing in front of him, holding two bags in his gloved hands.

"Breakfast?" Flack asked when the kid failed to talk.

"No, sir, evidence," the rookie policeman offered, clearly searching for the right words to offer his report. "Search party found these next to some tire tracks, just three houses down the street."

Flack grabbed the transparent bags. One had what was left of a hot dog and the other a cigarette butt.

"You told us to collect anything that seemed suspicious or out of place," the policeman justified, seeing the flat look that the detective was giving the two items.

"And why would this be suspicious or out of place?"

"The way it was on the ground, sir, piled on the road near the sidewalk. This is a semi-private street, and according to the locals, streets are cleaned up around midnight and the trash is picked up two hours after that. Clock work, every day except Sundays," he explained. At Flack's nod, he went on.

"It looks like someone parked there sometime after that, stayed there for a while and then left in a hurry. There were skid marks on the road."

"Good work, kid," Flack said, handing the bags back. "See that these are taken to the lab and get someone to photograph those skid marks."

As he walked away from the flashing lights and tumult in the main street, Flack grabbed his flash light and looked around.

His grandfather had spent sometime in house construction and he'd done some safe houses and bunkers too. People were afraid those days, and these things were their safety pillow. It had been a long time ago, but Flack remembered some of the tales the old man used to tell about the inner workings of those things.

Military bunkers were completely self sustained, isolated from the outside world, with built in power generators and air recycling pumps. The first bunkers made available for the common citizen had been pretty close to the military ones. But as the fever grew and more people started to want one, commerce stepped in and came up with their standard version. One that looked safe and sturdy as a bank vault, but without the heavy machinery necessary to make it independent.

Flack smiled when he saw the grey rock and thanked his dead grandfather. Without the air recycling pumps, the bunker needed the usual means to get fresh air down there and these false stones were usually it.

If the killer was getting audio or video feeding from down there, this would be his best way of getting a signal out without calling too much attention.

He bent down, easily picking the plastic stone up and revealing the small opening of the ventilation system. His smile broadened when he saw the tip of wires coming out of it as well.

"Detective Flack!"

Don looked up, greeting the fireman that had yelled for him.

"Something up?"

The other man smiled.

"Something down, you might say," he said, looking curiously at the stone in Flack's hands. "The hole is finished and we thought you might want a word with the guys down there before we put in the explosive."

"You bet I want," he said, the excitement clear in his voice. He dropped his lit flash light on the ground and followed the fireman.

He was giving orders as soon as he came across one of the uniforms on duty.

"Bag this for me and take it to the lab," he handed the rock to the policeman without even stopping. "There's a flash light signaling a venting system shaft opening. Two wires are sticking out of it. I want to know what they're transmitting and where their signal is being sent."

Before entering the house, his eyes fell on the news' vans, with their paraphernalia of antennas and satellite dishes on top. The idea lit inside his head like a magic light bulb. The press would be useful after all.

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	24. Chapter 22

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Mac was looking over Aiden' shoulder. On the small space that she had cleared on top of the table, was the file she'd uncovered amidst the rest of the books and old papers.

The file was made of transparent blue plastic and the material, more recent than any of the others, had called to her attention.

The top first pages on the file showed social security numbers, alphabetically ordered by occupation. The list of names of the people whom they belonged to was detailed enough to contained work address, home address, marriage status and even number of children. IRS information pages.

The top of the page bared the FBI's logo and the name of the agent that had accessed the information.

"John Donauh," Mac read with a note of disbelief in his voice. The man had come to them, on the pretext of helping them solve the crimes that he'd committed? Something was missing from that picture, something that made no sense for the older CSI.

"This was how he picked them," Aiden said, a gloved finger quickly scanning the lists. "He only needed to go through the letter A to get all of his victims."

Eight names were highlighted with a florescent marker. Some had been scratched over with a red marker.

"Ramirez: Aid, medical; Mills: Attorney, law…" she read the highlights. "There's a couple of names that he must've rejected, because I don't recognize any of them, but it looks like he basically picked the first ones on the list that fit the letters he needed."

"Aid, Attorney, Art teachers," Stella named the victims' occupations from memory. "What about the Stutons? He was a consulter and she a dentist."

Aiden flipped to the end of the list.

"They're not here. Why them then?" She asked no one in particular.

Mac answered her.

"They were picked because of this," he said, looking around. "He must have selected this place long before he picked any of the victims. The Stutons were the first couple near by that fitted what he needed."

"But why would a FBI agent do this? They go through periodic psychological evaluations, same as we do. How could've they missed a sick mind like this?" Stella asked, remembering the important piece of information that the agent had brought them. The initials spelling Messer. "Why Danny?"

"As far as we know, there is no connection between them," Mac said, recalling the agent's first visit to the lab, earlier the day before. He'd been looking at Danny, but the young man had been talking then, so he was the logical place to look at when the agent had entered the room.

"What ever it is, it has been going on for some time," Aiden said, still going through the thick file. Inside a vanilla coloured envelop were two large black and white pictures of Danny and several colour Polaroid's. One of the larger ones had been taken just outside the lab. The smaller ones where from various locations.

She could recognize his apartment building, the gymn he usually went to on his free days and a couple of crime scenes they'd worked together. The oldest one she could recognize was over a month old.

"He's been stalking him."

A faint 'Anybody home?' interrupted them, coming from the entry room. Only then did they realize that the drilling sound had finally stopped.

"Is that Flack?" Aiden asked, replacing Danny's pictures on the file and starting towards the ladder.

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The large photograph of Manhattan, hanging over the couch, had caught Stella's attention the minute they had entered that room. It wasn't an artistic novelty, just a very common picture of the city by night, taken from the Staten Island Ferry's point of view, with the thousand buildings' lights playing over the still waters of the river.

She'd seen the same picture more times than she could remember, but still found it beautiful. In that place in particular, where every space had a trace of horror etch in to it, that serene view of NY had been the solemn piece of normality where she could rest her eyes.

Now, as they passed by it again, on their way to answer Flack's insistent callings, she stopped to look at it again. Something wasn't right in that picture.

Mac silently asked Aiden to go ahead to answer Flack as he joined the other woman. His eyes followed her gaze to the picture.

"What is it?"

She tilted her head to one side, trying to catch a different angle of the picture.

"What do you see here?"

Over their silence they could hear Aiden and Flack's shouted conversation. She was telling him about their findings. His side of the conversation wasn't clear to them.

"Manhattan," Mac finally answered, wandering why she was asking him the obvious. "Pos 9/11 Manhattan."

Her head shot up and she looked at him. Because she had seen it so many times, her whole life to be exact, she had missed. The familiar landmark of the Twin Towers was missing from the picture.

He realized what was wrong with that picture at the same time that she did.

"The man who owned the house died in 1996. The WTC's attack happened five years after he was dead," he said, turning on his flashlight.

Kneeling over the couch, Mac carefully examined every edge of the picture's framing box and every inch of its glossy surface, finding no usable print. Only when he passed the light over the picture's silver full moon, did he noticed the different pattern in the reflection.

"Why would the killer bring in a decorative piece?" Stella asked, seeing Mac slightly raise the bottom edge of the picture and pointing his light up.

"Because he was trying to hide the hole behind it," he said with a smile. "And made a mistake."

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Flack was developing a headache. He wasn't much of a headache kind of guy, but when he had them, they were bad.

The story that Aiden had told him sounded like something taken out of a Stephen King's novel. Danny had a stalker? An FBI agent at that?

What had happened to good old serial killers, who killed to get their rocks off and because their mommies hadn't warmed up their milk cups before going to bed?

His mind was bubbling with grim theories and possibilities as he left the house and made his way towards the nearest news' van. His cell phone was on his hand and dispatch's number was already ringing.

If this guy had gone through all of this trouble to get him and the others occupied around this house tonight, that meant he was probably planning to make his move on Danny at the same time. As he tried to get a connection with the uniforms on guard at Danny's building, Flack prayed that he was't too late.

He banged on the door of the van, being greeted by another policeman.

"Anything?" He asked, looking at the panoply of screens and blinking instrument panels inside the TV's van.

A young guy with a set of headphones hanging from his neck gave him a toothy smile, pointing at one screen in particular, thoughts of winning a Pulitzer over this already racing through his mind.

On the screen, Mac and Stella were looking directly at them, touching the hidden camera. A digital clock was counting down, facing away from them and showing less than twenty minutes. The bomb seating next to it didn't look as harmless as the one that had blown up the hatch's lock.

"Get the bomb squad down there!" Flack blared, his phone completely forgotten in his hand. "Can you triangulate the signal to show us where this is being sent to?" He asked the young guy, a sense of urgency seeping in to his voice.

"Piece of cake, man," the young man said, punching a series of buttons. A Goggle Earth photo appeared on screen, showing an aerial view of NY City.

In a painfully slow manner, the satellite photo started to narrow down to show a more detailed view of the city, closing in on Long Island, then Queens. When the map started to close in on Ridgewood Street, Flack already knew where the signal was being sent.

"Son of a bitch's already there!" He said, storming out of the van. He hit the end call button on his cell and punched Danny's number instead. "Pick it up, man, just pick it up," he begged the ringing tone in his ear. Danny's answering machine greeted him with its familiar 'I'm not answering, so you know what to do' flat recorded message.

Throwing one last look at the friends that were trapped with a bomb, he started his car, hoping to reach the friend that was trapped with a killer in time. It was a fifteen minute drive from Jackson Heights to Danny's place. Flack was planning on breaking any traffic rule that would allow him to get there in less than five.

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	25. Chapter 23

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The police sirens echoed down the street, the sound shifting as it moved closer. For one moment, Danny hoped that the sound wouldn't move past his apartment building.

The sirens faded in to the distance and he realized that they weren't coming for him. It was unfortunate that the NYPD had no crystal ball and couldn't guess who was in need of help and that his telepathic abilities were non existent. He could've used a little bit of both right now.

Danny shivered against the cold that had taken control of his body. The building was too old to have central heating, which hadn't bothered him that much when he bought the place, because old had meant a lower price. Now it meant that he was freezing cold.

The bottle of vodka was right in front of him, mostly intact, but he didn't dare to drink any more of it. The alcohol would help him to keep warm, but he had an empty stomach and a cracked head. If he wanted to stand any chance against this guy, he would need all of his senses sharp.

His hands were resting against his lap, quietly working on the lacy bonds. They hadn't looked like much, but Danny didn't dare to put too much strength in to loosing them up, not while the killer was watching him closely.

While his fingers worked, Danny had been trying to figure his options. He was coming up short.

He had a weapon on the table, but with the killer holding the bomb's remote in his hand, Danny would never be able to move fast enough to stop him from pushing the button. He had a weapon on the drawer, but no way of moving there without causing the same effect.

Danny had debated with himself for some time about how much of what the killer was telling him could be taken seriously.

The black and white images in front of him were solid proof that his friends were working somewhere, with no idea that there was a bomb next to them; but he had to believe the killer's word that what he was seeing was in fact a bomb.

The remote in the man's hand seemed like the real deal, but he had to trust the killer's word that its signal would be strong enough to reach wherever the others were and detonate the bomb, if he didn't cooperate.

If he did as the killer wanted and actually grabbed the knife to kill himself, something he had no intention of doing, he'd still have to trust the killer's word that he would stop the bomb by using that same remote.

However, something that the other man had said had, weirdly enough, made Danny believe him. The killer had mentioned the word 'client'. He'd said that, by not cooperating, Danny would be ruining his client's revenge.

The CSI was dealing with a professional hit man and, strange as it would sound, these men had an odd sort of rules to which they obeyed. Danny could trust any other criminal to bluff and lie his way around any situation, but men who killed for money, hired guns, they had a reputation to maintain. They didn't bluff.

He needed some sort of advantage over the killer. In his mind, Danny went through his daily routine and what he knew about the routines of the people that lived in the surrounding apartments, searching for something that he would know in advance but the killer couldn't be aware. He couldn't remember anything of use.

His alarm clock, usually set to go off at six o'clock, would provide a nice noisy sound to distract the guy. Knowing that he wouldn't need to get up for work the next morning, Danny had turned it off the night before, so no help from there.

His next door neighbours, a Philippine young couple, usually got up around eight, when he was getting out, so they would still be asleep now. Even if they heard any weird noises coming from his apartment, Danny doubted that they would be coming knocking on his door.

In the apartment across from him lived an old lady, someone's granny. He could smell her baked cakes on the weekends. This early in the morning she would be home, getting ready to walk Fred, her dog, to the street. They had never talked before, but Danny knew that she was almost deaf, so no amount of noise would bring her here either.

He didn't knew who lived upstairs, just that whoever it was, they liked Queen and had no problem sharing their musical tastes with the rest of the building. But that was usually at night. In the morning Danny barely heard anything from there.

No one to knock at his door, no neighbour to notice if he was alive or dead inside his apartment. Being a guy who liked his privacy, that notion wouldn't've bothered him on any other day, but today, as a prisoner in his own house, it was slightly depressing.

To anyone looking from outside, the two men looked like they were playing a childish staring game, barely blinking, looking at each other.

"I have a question for you, Donauh," Danny broke both eye contact and the silence. "I'm guessing that's not your real name, but you don't mind, do you?"

Donauh sat back against his chair, a smile on his face, silent. His hands were playing with the bomb's remote but his pale eyes were fixed on his prey, analysing.

"Why kill six innocent people just to get to me?"

Danny looked at the clock hanging over the kitchen's door. It was shaped like a pizza, Flack's idea of a Christmas gift a few years ago. Ten minutes to six in the morning. He looked at the timer on the bomb. He had twenty five minutes to do something.

Another siren raced down the street. Danny realized that the man wouldn't answer.

"I mean, you were the sick bastard who killed all those bodies we found with the marks on the back, weren't you?"

The smirk on the killer's face was getting on his nerves, but Danny kept talking.

"Were they part of the deal, or just a means to an end? Because I go'ra tell you, that was one hell of a plan you had going on."

Instead of falling for Danny's chat, the killer seemed to be growing bored. He theatrically pointed to his watch.

"You're wasting time."

Danny paid him no attention.

"We fell for it like fucking idiots, didn't we?" He went on. His left wrist was almost free. "The whole FBI's guy comes to help with serial killer's case; just hours after we'd made the connection. You knew that we'd automatically accept your presence if multiple killings were involved, am I right?"

Donauh was still silent, but Danny could see that his words weren't being ignored anymore. The killer was trying to keep his MO a secret and Danny was laying it out for him in a way that was too close to reality.

"And the whole thing with the list and my name? Brilliant!" The CSI was on a roll now.

Despite the situation, it was pleasing to gather all the pieces and uncover the killer's plans.

"You knew that any rule-obeying boss would pull me off the case, even send me home after that connection was made, and you made sure that the connection was made, didn't you?"

Danny pulled at the bindings, feeling another inch give in.

"Good thing I have a short name, hum? Imagine being paid to kill a guy named Sheffield or Bruckheimer… you'd be busy for a month!"

"Always the cop, aren't you?" Donauh said. He knew the other man was up to something. He was, in fact, counting on it. From what he'd learned about the CSI man, he knew that he wouldn't give up easily.

"Either way this thing goes, you will soon be dead, and still you're trying to figure out what I did and didn't do."

"Professional flaw, I agree," Danny said with a shrug of his face. His left hand was almost free. "But still you can't blame a guy for trying to figure out why he's being killed, right? I mean, there is no way this has anything to do with what happened to officer Minhas."

The killer's curiosity spiked at that comment.

"How'd you figure that out? You didn't make a lot of friends when you killed another cop, Daniel. What makes you so sure that one of them didn't pay me to get you off the map?"

Danny felt that life couldn't get stranger than this. He was in his kitchen, explaining to his would- be- killer, how he'd planned his death.

"You killed Mills and Ramirez three days ago and for all of this to work, you'd been planning it for some time. Minhas was killed last week," he paused, setting on his face the affected look that he knew the other man would be expecting at the mention of the shooting. His left hand came free, "... you wouldn't have the time."

Donauh set the remote on the table and clapped his hands, congratulating the CSI's demonstration of logic. His usual victims weren't this much fun.

Danny made his move before the first clap of hands. Neither man heard the phone ringing in the living room.

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AN: Gary Sheffield and Jerry Bruckheimer are real persons, and I mean no offence to either by using their names on this portion of the story. Mr. Sheffield's one of the most well paid baseball players and his current team is the New York Yankees, so I figured Danny would know all about the man. Mr. Bruckheimer needs no introductions.


	26. Chapter 24

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He hadn't planned it like this; he'd just grabbed the opportunity when he saw it. The second Danny realized that the killer had released his dead grip on the bomb's remote to clap his hands, he'd moved by instinct.

Danny grunted as he, using both hands as leverage, grabbed the edge of his wooden table and pushed, turning the heavy piece up side down and on top of the killer.

Everything on the tabletop went crashing to the ground. The knife slid out of the kitchen, coming to stop in the hall facing the front door. The small TV set landed on a mess of sparks and broken glass, while the vodka bottle rolled on the floor, empting its contents, unbroken. The camcorder had lost its LCD screen viewer but the red light was still on.

Donauh, thrown off balanced by Danny's move, had landed on his back, his air knocked out of him by the fall and the weight of the table, as it crashed on top of him.

The remote, Danny's priority at that moment, had fallen to the floor as well, but in the middle of the debris covering the kitchen's floor tiles, he couldn't see where it had landed. He went for the gun instead.

Almost throwing himself at the kitchen's counter, Danny opened the first drawer. His eyes were still frenetically looking for the missing remote as his right hand closed around the empty space were his gun used to be. Danny cursed his bad luck.

The sound of a weapon being cocked made him turned around, already knowing what he would see.

Donauh was red faced with anger and a gash on his left cheek was slowly dripping down his face. He cleaned it in an enraged gesture, using his left sleeve. His right hand was pointing a gun at Danny.

Danny's gun.

"Looking for this?" He snarled. "How stupid can you be, thinking I wouldn't search your place for something like this?" Donauh hissed as he eased one knee to the floor.

Danny wasn't listening. His heart was thumping against his chest like a wild horse, trying to break free from his ribcage. He leaned back against the counter, supporting himself as his legs shook with the adrenalin rush.

The CSI had finally spotted the remote and he almost laughed at the irony. The damn thing had fallen under Donauh when he'd crashed to the floor. Now he could only watch as the killer picked it up again.

"I warned about what would happen if you tried a stunt like this," Donauh sounded like a father, reprehending his misbehaving child.

Danny remembered lying on his bed just a few hours ago, complaining about time moving too slowly. Now, as he faced his failure, time was moving so fast that he could hardly keep up. Donauh's finger was on the remote's button.

"No! Wait! I'll…"

He had no time to talk the killer out of it; he had no chance to offer his life in exchange for his friends' safety. He could do nothing as he watched Donauh pressed the button, knowing that somewhere in the city, a bomb had just detonated and his friends were dead.

Donauh smiled as he saw the desolated look on the young man's face. There was no point in trying to stage a suicide now; he would never manage to make it believable. He raised the gun, ready to finish his job.

Something inside Danny snapped.

The gun's barrel was aimed straight at his chest, but he wasn't seeing the black metal. He knew that the gun was loaded and that at such distance, no one would miss, especially not a professional killer, but his brain wasn't in command anymore.

All he could see was Aiden's smirk, as she teased him about some new girlfriend, whose name he could no longer remember; all he could sense was Stella's motherly touch, as she passed by him in the morning and squeezed his shoulder, asking how he was doing; all he could hear was Mac's voice, laced with disappointment, because he hadn't lived up to the older man's expectations.

He didn't rationalize it. He just reacted.

With his eyes brimming with tears that he refused to shed, Danny threw himself at the killer.

The gunshot sounded like thunder inside the small kitchen. A portion of Danny's brain noticed the blood splatter on his fridge's door and kitchen counter. Somehow he knew that it was his blood, but he could feel no pain.

The killer hadn't expected the move. From his experience, he knew that people always ran away from guns, not throw themselves at them. Next thing he knew, he was looking at his target's kitchen ceiling and had an angry, bleeding man on top of him, cursing, screaming and punching him.

Donauh dropped the remote, using one hand to push Danny off of him, while the other closed around the gun, trying to get a second shot at the struggling man.

Danny felt none of punches from the other man. All he could focus on was getting his hands around the killer's throat and squeeze every bit of life out of him. He wanted the other man to stop breathing. He wanted the other man to pay for the pain he was inflicting on him.

"You stupid motherfucker!" He spat, punctuating each word with a well aimed punch. "You sick, sick sonofabitch!"

Donauh knew that he was running out of time. That shot must've been heard by half of the building and he was sure that, by now, at least ten different calls had already been made to 911. He had seconds to act.

He didn't use guns often. They were too nosy, too traceable and not always safe for those pulling the trigger. As Donauh struggled and managed to turn his right hand enough to point the gun at Danny again, he knew that taking the shot would bring consequences for him too.

He felt his jacket's left sleeve ripping off as the young man yanked his arm around and tried to get the weapon from his hand. Knowing that it was his only chance, Donauh pressed the trigger.

The gun had been too close to his head. His scream of pain was almost simultaneous with the one coming from his target's throat, as the gunpowder burned Donauh's eyes and the discharge left his right ear ringing.

Donauh pushed the other man's dead weight away from him and quickly scrambled to his feet. He looked at the door, fearing it to be kicked open by the police at any minute. He took one look at his victim, making sure that he was dead.

The young man's eyes were closed, his mouth slacked and his lips slightly parted. The left side of his head was a mess of blood and hair and from under the arm that had fallen over the man' stomach, Donauh could see the flow of blood from the previous shot.

A phone was ringing, the sound coming from the living room imposing itself over the ringing inside the killer's ears. Donauh tensed, wondering how many times it'd already ring before.

The answering machine picked it up and the voice of the man he'd just killed filled the silent room.

"I'm not answering, so you know what to do."

The killer grabbed his backpack, quickly fishing for the cloth that he'd used before as a gag. With practiced strokes, he wiped the gun clean and threw it on the floor. Next he grabbed all that he'd brought with him, throwing the remains of the TV set and camcorder inside his backpack.

Taking a deep breath, Donauh took off his ruined jacket, wiped his face clean on it and folded it inside his backpack. He looked down on himself, assessing any visible signs of what he'd done, satisfied that, unless someone took the time to have a good look at him, no one would be able to tell.

His car wasn't parked far, but it was already daytime outside, and he knew it would be a risk to walk even that short distance. A risk that, none the less, he would have to take. The air was still free of police sirens, but he knew that they would be arriving soon.

Taking one last look around, searching for any loose end that he might've missed before, Donauh planted a casual look on his face, shouldered his backpack and left.

The job might've not gone exactly as he'd planned it, but in the end, he'd done what he'd been paid to do.

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	27. Chapter 25

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Flack remembered having nightmares that were just like this.

In his dreams, there was usually an obstacle he had to go through, often a door he had to open, knowing that on the other side, something terrible was happening. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how strongly he kicked, the door wouldn't let him in.

Then he would hear the gunshot' sound and the door would open all by itself, finally allowing him entrance.

He was always too late in his nightmares. He would near the dead body on the floor, turn it around and see his father's face, a friend's face, sometimes even his own face. That was when he would wake up, sweating, panting, but glad that it'd been only a dream.

As Flack knocked on Danny's door, there was a strong sense of dejá vu washing over him.

In between trying to reach Danny's cell and house phones, Flack had called for backup from his car, giving specific instructions to all teams responding that they should 'play dead' until told other wise. That meant no sirens, no lights and a quiet seating of perimeter around Danny's apartment building. The last thing Flack wanted was this thing turning in to a hostage situation.

He'd parked his car right behind the officers that had stood on guard in Danny' street. They were talking on the police radio, reporting two gunshots that they'd just heard.

In the quiet street that was only now beginning to wake up, the sound of a weapon going off had travelled far.

Both seasoned officers of the NYPD, neither man had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary during the time they'd been there. No suspicious cars had parked near the building, no odd looking suspects had entered the place. Without more information on who might be coming after the cop that they were guarding, there wasn't much more that they could've done. Still, the sound of gunshots had felt like a slap on their professional pride.

Flack had gone up the five storeys up to Danny's flat alone, for once glad that there was no elevator in the old place. Donauh had only one way of getting out of there, and that would be through him.

There were only three apartments on Danny's floor. The door to number 5A was opened and a man with dark hair and wearing nothing but boxer shorts was peaking at the corridor. He gasped when he saw the tall man bearing a gun, coming right at him.

"NYPD," Flack IDed himself, flashing his badge. "Go back inside and do not come out under any circumstance."

The man, too frightened to talk, just nodded and quietly closed his door again. From inside Flack could hear a woman's voice, talking in some foreigner language.

Making sure that there were no more neighbours putting themselves in danger, Flack moved in on apartment 5B.

"Open up!" He yelled, banging on Danny's closed door. Inside, everything was silent.

Flack took two steps back and, aiming at the lock, kicked on the door. The impact of his foot on the thick block of wood that was Danny's front door, made him feel every single bone on his leg, from the tip of his toes to the bottom of his hip.

Trust his friend to buy a house old enough to have a solid door. The wood around the lock had splintered but not broken.

Flack was balancing for a second kick when the gunshot sound broke the silence. And for a moment the detective was sure that this was one of his nightmares and he was about to wake up on his own bed.

The lock didn't resist his second kick. Flack went inside, heart hammering, weapon ready.

He'd been to Danny's place a couple of times before, picking him up when the young man's car was broken or to watch a baseball game, on weekends when both of them happened to have a day off. The apartment wasn't very big, and Flack knew the lay out of it well enough.

Pass the front door, the first opening to the left gave access to the living room, the second to the kitchen. At the other end of the hall was Danny's room. There was a bathroom to the right and not much else.

There was a distinct smell in the air, but Flack couldn't name it. Daylight was coming out from the living room door, a greyish morning soft glow, but enough for him to see his way around. There was a broken painting on the floor to his left, but no other signs of forced entry.

"Dan? Buddy? You here?"

Flack felt like a rookie all over again, doing a search of the apartment with no backup, but he didn't cared all that much. Poking his head around the first door, he half expected to be greeted by a gunshot. Instead of the hot lead, he was hit by the cold wind coming from Danny's double windows, opened ajar.

"Dan, come on! Do some noise! Don't make me search the entire Buckingham Palace for you!"

Danny's coat was lying over the couch's arm, the car keys dropped on top of it. A sport's magazine, on top of the coffee table, was producing an annoying noise as it's top pages flapped, moved by the draft coming from outside.

As Flack moved inside the living room, the body that had been half hidden by the couch came in to view.

A man, with light hair and wearing back pants and shirt, was laying face down. Blood pooled around his head, in a gory dark halo. His out stretched right hand was clenched around the strap of a black handbag.

Flack approach carefully. From what he could see, it wasn't Danny, something that he was grateful for, because as far as he could tell, the man wasn't breathing. Flack put two fingers on the man's neck, confirming his suspicions. His fingers came away bloody.

"Fuck!" He let out. Using the barrel of his gun, he turned the man's head aside, just enough to have a look at his face. He'd only seen the man once, but he was good at memorizing people's faces. "Donauh."

Flack's heart skipped a beat inside his chest. If the killer was dead, why wasn't Danny answering his calls?

From his crouching position next to the body, Flack looked ahead. Right in front of him was the countertop that served as frontier between the kitchen and the living room. And behind it he could see part of the damaged kitchen.

He was on his feet and inside the kitchen without even thinking. He'd found Danny.

It was impossible to reach his friend without disrupting the scene. There were wood splinters and broken glass everywhere on the floor. The odd smell of alcohol, blood and gunpowder was impossible to ignore now.

Danny was half leaning against the fridge's door, his right hand limply holding a gun. There was blood everywhere.

All that Flack could think, as he kneeled beside Danny and reached for his cell phone to call for an ambulance, was that he was stepping all over his friend's blood. And that was wrong on so many levels.

It was irrational to believe that someone could still be alive when that much blood was on the outside instead of the inside. Still, as Flack checked for breathing while pressing two fingers to Danny's neck, to check for a pulse, he was demanding to every saint on the altar to make sure that he would find some sign of life under his fingers. He couldn't find one.

Cursing, he looked at the gunshot wound on Danny's stomach, blood pouring freely from it. Silently apologizing to his friend, Flack pushed the unresponsive body to the floor.

"Come on man," he hissed, tilting Danny's head back. "This is not what we'd agreed, Dan." Flack took a deep breathe and forced his air inside Danny's opened mouth, "this does not count as dying of old age, you bastard!"

Sweat was seeping in to his eyes by the time Flack was beginning compressions. When he'd taken that department' side course in first aid, this was not what he'd had in mind.

A part of his brain kept telling him that he should be keeping scores on how long it'd been since he'd started, but he had lost track of time. All his brain could cope at that moment was that after reaching fifteen compressions, it was time to force two blows inside Danny's chest. Keep his heart pumping, keep his lungs working.

He gasped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.  
"We'll take it from here, sir," the paramedic gently told him.

Flack looked around. Danny's house was full of people. He hadn't noticed a thing.

There were the paramedics, hands filled with medical equipment, calmly pushing him aside so that they could do their job; there were other policemen, securing the place and looking at him like he was the kid who'd lost his puppy; there was a team of CSI's, faces he wasn't familiar with, standing outside the door, waiting to come in an process the crime scene. Flack's heart clenched.

Danny's house had become a crime scene.

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	28. Chapter 26

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The sun had risen above NY City behind a curtain of clouds that promised heavy rain within the day.

For everyone working at number 82 in Jackson's Heights, it had been a long night, so even the gloomy colours of a rainy day had been more than welcomed.

Upon hearing that there was a bomb underneath the old house, the cluster of people beyond the police barriers had only increased in numbers, despite all warnings about keeping a safe distance.

A new day had begun, and the old house was still standing. Inside, a tired looking fireman reached the top of the basement' stairs and signalled that everyone should stand back.

"Fire in the hole," he flatly announced, pressing a red button.

There was a brief bass sound, sounding almost like a distant car's exhaustion, and the lights on the ceiling lamps swung, threatening to go out. Then a cloud of dust rose from basement, through the opened door and silence returned.

"Clear," the same man yelled, before placing a protection mask over his mouth and nose and leading the way back downstairs.

Most of the destroyed concrete had flown away from the hole on the ground, leaving a new opened space to the right side of the wooden stairs.

The fireman tested the surrounding ground's stability before stepping on it. Satisfied that it would hold his solid 180 pounds, he neared the hole.

"Everyone's ok down there?"

Mac's face came in to view, looking up at the man.

"A bit dusted up, but fine," he replied.

Minutes later, the three CSI's had climbed out of the hole using the rope ladder that the fireman had tossed them.

"The jamming device is still on?" Mac asked one of the bomb squad officers that had joined them in the basement.

The man, with his heavy protection gear on, nodded in reply.

"Until I get to check your handy work, detective, that device is our best friend," he said with a smile. "No offence intended, but…" he quickly added.

Mac cut him out.

"None taken," he replied with a tired smile, offering his right hand. "Thank you for your help."

The second that there had been a visual confirmation on the presence of a second bomb inside the bunker, the bomb squad unit had activated a jamming device, a machine designed to scramble all possible audio frequencies that could come from outside and detonate the bomb.

Then, it had been up to the CSIs inside the bunker to make sure that the bomb was defused.

Mac's experience as a marine and his years in CSI had taught him a bit about bombs, enough to, with a little help from the bomb squad's agents, try to render the device they'd found in the hole behind the picture, useless.

The agent kneeling on the floor, screaming commands in to a tiny hole through the concrete, had felt a bit silly, but in the end it had paid off. The bomb had been stopped long before it could reach zero.

Stella and Aiden, dusting the white powdery concrete dust off their clothes, were already on top, talking to another detective when Mac joined them.

"Any word on Flack and Danny?" He asked, not liking the look he was seeing on both women's face.

The other man, older than Mac, with a heavy moustache under his nose and hair that made him look like he'd just gotten out of bed, replied him.

"Dispatch relayed a 10-10 in an apartment building on Myrtle Avenue, Ridgewood," the man repeated what he'd already told the female detectives. "Two gunshot victims. The DOA was sent directly to OCME. The other had two sluggers in him, was sent to St. John's. Word is that there was an officer involved in the shooting, but we're still waiting on confirmation on who's who."

The older man had to shout his last words. The three CSIs were already on their way to the car they'd arrived in.

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Flack inhale the nicotine from his cigar like a man drinking water after crossing the desert. And it wasn't even the first one he had.

The ride inside the ambulance had been one the most scary experiences in the young detective's life. The paramedics working on Danny had barely succeeded in getting him alive to the hospital.

Don hadn't been able to even grab his friend's hand as he was patched together. The space in the back of the ambulance was too narrow and he would only stand in the way.

He could only watch Danny as transparent tubes were shoved up his arms and down his throat, electrical machines whined in the background and medical jargon flew back and forth like bullets in a battle field.

Flack's path had been cut as soon as they arrived at the hospital's trauma room door, a white sliding piece of double glass that closed on his face and where not even his badge allowed him entrance.

The waiting room was too depressing to withstand alone. Instead, Flack had gone to a newsstand, bought his first pack of cigarettes in two years, and resigned himself to wait outside for awhile. The cold and the nicotine would keep him grounded and alert until it was time to go inside and start begging for news on his friend.

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They'd had to look twice before realizing that the tall guy in blue scrubs smoking outside the ER's door was in fact Flack.

He'd already seen them. He tossed the cigarette's butt to the ground and stepped on it.

"Mac, Stella, Aiden," he greeted them with a smile, "glad to see you guys alright."

None doubted his words, but it was easy to notice that the smile had failed to reach the detective's blue eyes.

"Danny?" Aiden asked.

"Still no word," he said with a tired sigh. "I tried calling you guys a number of times, but the signal couldn't get through."

Mac fished for the cell phone in his pocket. Amidst Flack's failed calls, he had one from his friend in D.C.

"The bomb squad was jamming all signals at the crime scene," he explained. "We've just heard."

Stella neared the young man, one hand rubbing his arm. The detective' skin was cold.

"What happened, Flack?"

Don reached for another cigar. Old habits died hard.

"Donauh was filming you guys. We traced the signal back to Danny's place. I tried to get there as fast as I could, but you know how traffic in this city is," he said with a dry chuckle. There was no humour in his voice. "When I got there, Donauh was already dead. Danny was holding the gun, so I'm guessing he managed to catch the sonovbitch before…"

He stopped, taking a deep breath to control his voice. He was seeing it all again, remembering details that he'd missed the first time around because his focus was on Danny.

"One single shot, that's what I heard before kicking the door open. Donauh's body was facing away from Danny, so I guess he was on his way out when he was killed."

He paused to drag a smoke out of his lit cigar.

"Danny wasn't breathing when I reached him," he finally added.

Stella was blinking away tears and Aiden was so tense that they could see her jaw twitching.

"He'll make it, Flack," Mac's words broke their collective grim thoughts. "He's a tough kid."

Flack was shaking his head slowly. The muscles on his face contorted from grimace to smirk to grimace again, in a constant battle to keep the grief from reaching his eyes.

"He looked pretty bad, Mac."

A nurse in crispy white uniform interrupted them, her presence the saving grace factor that allowed Flack to turn around and wipe his eyes clean.

"Are you from the crime lab?" She asked no one in particular.

Mac nodded.

"I was asked to give these to you people," she said, holding a large paper bag in one hand and a small plastic one in the other. "These are detective Messer's personal things," she handed Mac the large bag, "and this, we're not very sure what it is, but he was holding on to it pretty tight," she handed the small one. "It doesn't match his clothes, so…"

Mac held the plastic against the light. It held a piece of brown cloth. The darker stains in it looked like blood.

"Any word on his condition yet?" Stella asked.

The nurse shook her head, her face sad in sympathy. For those working inside those walls, it was easy to forget how hard it was for those outside to wait on news about their loved ones. She had always tried to keep that in mind.

"They're still working on him," she explained. "As soon as the surgeon leaves the OR, he'll talk to you, ok?"

Stella whispered a thank you and turned to the others, her arms crossed tight over her chest, hugging herself.

"Has anyone called his parents yet?"

Flack nodded.

"They're out of town. They'll try to catch the first plane back."

"Ok," she nodded, her eyes carefully analysing the tall man. She knew that Flack and Danny were friends even before joining the academy. She could imagine how hard this must be to the young detective. "Why don't we go inside?" She suggested with a reassuring smile. "You must freezing cold in those pyjamas."

This time Flack's grin was genuine.

"Not pyjamas, they're OR scrubs," he explained, following her inside. "Apparently I was scaring off people, standing out here in dirty clothes."

No one asked why his clothes were dirty, or what had stained them. They could still see the reddish brown smears in his hands and face. Neither had the courage to tell him that he still had Danny's blood on him.

"Coming, Mac?" Aiden asked, when she noticed that the older man hadn't followed them to the door.

"Need to make a few phone calls," he explained. He was holding the bags that the nurse had given them, "and someone should get these to the lab."

Aiden nodded, following the others to the waiting room. Silently she was thanking him. She wouldn't be able to bring herself to go to the lab before hearing anything on Danny, and yet those where important pieces of evidence that needed to reach the lab quickly.

Mac must've understood that and had taken the task upon himself.

"We'll call the minute we have news, ok?" she turn and called to him.

Mac just nodded and walked away.

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	29. Chapter 27

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No matter what colour they painted it, hospital waiting rooms could never disguise what they really were. Containment units for grief and pain.

Pain over what was unknown. Pain over what was discovered. Pain over what was found. Pain over what had been lost.

This one was pale green.

Two separate groups of people sat there, clustered close together, one on each end of the windowless square room.

On the back of the room, there was a man with Mexican features with two teenaged girls. The traces of family resemblance were clear between them. They were all holding hands, hard enough to cut blood circulation. Occasionally the man would lift his red rimmed eyes off the floor and look at the watch, hanging outside on the hall. The girls were quietly sobbing.

When the group of detectives arrived, they had sat the farthest away they could, out of respect. They didn't want to intrude in to that family's pain.

Minutes after, a man in green scrubs entered the room. It was as if royalty had arrived. Everyone jumped out of their seats, anxious to know if the arriving news would be for them.

"Mr. Rodriguez?"

The detectives sat back on their plastic seats, watching as the Mexican man and the man in scrubs talked in hushed tones. The conversation was short, ending with the medic offering a sympathetic hand on Rodriguez' sobbing shoulder before turning away and leaving.

The man returned to the girls' side, the smile on his lips contrasting with the tears running down his face. "Ella está bien," they heard him whisper in to the girls necks as he hugged them close, "todo está bien."

There was no need for a translation. That family's waiting game had paid off. The detectives hopped that theirs would to.

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Mac could not remember a day in his career when he'd hated his job. Until today.

He'd finally returned the call to his friend in the Bureau. Donauh had been the real deal, but some of his actions over the last years had called the FBI's attention. They had been investigating him for some time now, trying to figure out what the man was doing. Mac had been the one informing them that they didn't need to worry about Donauh anymore. He'd been dealt with.

It had felt good to say the words, but the CSI knew that they were just words. An investigation still had to run. Donauh's list of victims was probably longer than the six he'd killed in NY.

Neither Mac nor anyone working close to Danny would be working on his case. Too much personal feelings, too many chances that they could lose perspective.

However, as head of CSI, it was within Mac's rights to oversee any piece of evidence being studied in his lab.

The contents of Donauh's handbag were displayed over the large table, being carefully analysed and documented by the team that had been assigned to the case. Mac had commandeered the video tape. He wanted to see what had happened.

He understood Flack's lack of faith now. It had been ugly.

Donauh was a hired hit man, and Danny had been one of his contracts. Nothing on that tape told him who had hired him, nor why he'd been hired. And the only who could tell them that was now dead.

When his cell phone rang and he saw Aiden's name on the monitor, Mac's heart jumped to his throat. There was always hope until the facts were laid out. Danny was alive and fighting until someone told him that they'd lost him.

The older detective raised the phone to his ear.

"Aiden?"

The four words she said back brought a smile to the man's face.

"He's gonna be ok."

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There was something about churches and intensive care units that made people behave in a reverent manner, maybe because both places carried with them the undeniable truth about control. You had none.

Most believers went to church to negotiate, aware that fate couldn't be controlled. They offered their faith, they left with hope.

To anyone standing outside any ICU, watching loved ones struggle back to life, the same truth was made clear. After Man's medicine paid its tribute to keep death at bay, it was time for faith and fate to have their struggle.

The female surgeon that had come to talk to them, after spending five hours mending the damaged made by both bullets, had started by saying that detective Messer had been very, very lucky.

The fact that he had arrived with a mild case of hypothermia had saved him from going in to shock from blood lost; the fact that Flack had started CPR almost immediately after Danny's heart stopped, had saved him from almost certain brain damage.

Both rounds had been close range, but of small calibre, thus doing less damage on their way; one of the bullets had grazed the left side of his skull, but had failed to penetrate the bone. His left eye had suffered some collateral burn damage, but she was certain that it was minor enough not to cause any permanent trouble to his eyesight.

The second bullet had done the most damage. It had been a through-and-through, entering the right side of his lower abdomen and exiting on the back of his higher thigh, hitting mostly muscle on its way out. On its way in, however, the bullet had ruptured Danny's colon. The surgeon had spend most of her time inside the OR trying to keep that rupture from evolving in to massive septicemia.

She had done her stitching; now it was up to him to do the healing.

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Mac walked through the aseptic green corridor in search of a familiar face. He recognized Stella's back, standing in front of a glass window.

The woman saw his refection on the glass and acknowledged his present with a slight nod of her head.

On the other side of the glass, the unit had only four beds, each surrounded by bleeping monitors and hissing tubes. Danny was on the second one.

There were three bags hanging over his bed, one red and two colourless, all looking like strange balloons, strapped to his arm. The bandage on his head covered all of his hair and part of his face, rending the young man unrecognizable. Mac had only guessed that it was him because Flack was seating next to that bed, a green disposable coat over his blue scrubs.

"How's he doing?" He asked.

"Sleeping off the anaesthesia," Stella replied. "Doctors said he should be waking in an hour or two."

"Aiden?"

"Went to get a cup of coffee."

Mac nodded absentmindedly. Inside the room, Flack's head nodded towards his chest, his eyes closed in sleep. It had been a long night for all of them.

"He believes we're dead," Mac said, cutting through the quiet hospital noise.

Stella's gaze left the window to land on him.

"What are you talking about?"

"Donauh filmed Danny, it was part of his contract's deal," Mac explained. "I saw the tape. We were the bargaining chip he was using to get Danny to do what he wanted. Danny fought back and Donauh detonated the bomb."

Stella inhale sharply. She knew that Mac's generic report was leaving much from being said, but she would get the fine details later.

"I'm guessing this happened sometime after the jamming device was activated, because the bomb didn't go off," Mac went on, turning from her to look at the unconscious men on the other side. "Only Danny and Donauh had no way of knowing that. The TV set he's been using to monitor us was broken by that time."

"Then he's in for a surprise when he wakes up," Aiden's voice came from behind them, her words smelling of hot coffee. They hadn't heard her coming. "We just need to make sure we're there when that happens."

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Final chapter's coming closer... stay tunned :)


	30. Chapter 28

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When it finally started to rain, water came down from the heavens with a vengeance. Within minutes everything was soaked through and the city's colours had been washed away in to the drains, turning the landscape black and grey. The night had slowly sipped through, but no one had noticed the difference.

The first thing that made Danny realize that he wasn't dead was the sound of rain, hitting mercilessly against the window. It was a sound that he'd always found smoothing.

It reminded him of cold winters spent in his grandma's kitchen, keeping warm by the oven, watching her cook. He would seat on the table, legs dangling above the floor, carefully memorizing her every move, waiting, knowing that she would let him have the first taste, ask him what he think of it. It always tasted deliciously.

Danny licked his lips, hopping to find a trace of his grandma's lasagne in them. The only thing he could taste in his mouth was blood.

The hour or two that the doctors had said it would take for Danny to slip out of the anaesthesia effects had turned in to six.

A number of policemen and lab techs had stopped by, worried about the wounded man's condition. They never stayed long. No one liked hospitals that much.

Flack had finally gone home to change his clothes. Mac had returned to the lab, to check on the investigation and Stella had gone out to get them something to eat.

Aiden had stayed, keeping to her vow that they would be there when Danny finally opened his eyes… eye, she corrected herself, looking at the bandage covering his left eye.

Deeming him stable enough, the doctors had decided to move Danny in to a private room, away from the stressful sight that an ICU's paraphernalia could offer to those waking up there.

The new room still had hospital written all over it, from the too clear walls supporting different machinery and monitors, to the aseptic smell that hung in the air. But at least it had a window with a view.

Aiden was seating next to Danny's bed, her hand holding his so that he would know that he wasn't alone. Her thumb was doing gentle circular motions on the back of his hand, enjoying the feeling of warm flesh underneath. Her eyes, however, were fixed on the rain outside, although all that she could see was the room's reflection staring back at her.

It was easier than looking at the face of the man lying on the bed. Something about seeing someone so independent and so full of life, looking so beaten and fragile, made her feel angry inside. A deep sense that things like these didn't happened to people like Danny. Or maybe they did happen. But not to those she knew and loved.

The surgeon had given them a very detailed report of what she had fixed, but all the rest she had left out.

Danny's face, at least the portion that Aiden could see, was bruised. She imagined that the hidden part wasn't looking much better. His lower lip was split and swollen. The hand that she was holding had a bandage covering his knuckles and the higher portion of his torso, the only one not hidden by the bed covers, was also bruised and covered in tiny cuts. How many times had she seen similar injuries in the crime scenes that she'd worked?

Lost inside her thoughts, Aiden almost missed it when Danny finally stirred. His tongue licked his lower lip and his face squeezed in a grimace. His eye popped open suddenly, looking around, lost.

"Hey, Messer," she whispered, one hand pushing the call button, the other rubbing his arm before holding his hand. "Welcome back."

She saw him blinking furiously, the blue orb trying to focus on her face as tears started to bloom underneath it. His voice came only as a whisper.

"Are you real?"

She had heard Mac's description of what had went through in Danny's apartment, up to the part when Donauh had pushed the bomb's button.

She had readied herself for a confused Danny, even a distress Danny when he woke up.

She hadn't been ready for the lost-boy's look that overcame him, making her friend look like he was five years old. It made her want to forget all about his bandages and just hug him tight.

"I'm real, and I'm ok," she reassured him, cleaning the tears off his face. "Mac and Stella are fine too… the bomb never went off."

He tried to nod, swallowing against the roughness in his throat. He failed on both.

A nurse came to the door, answering Aiden's call. When she saw the patient moving and alert, she left, saying the doctor would be there soon.

Neither was listening. Danny was already half asleep and Aiden was sniffing, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Her friend had just woken… her teary face was not the way she wanted to greet him.

He squeezed her hand, demanding her attention again.

"It was Donauh… he's the killer," he whispered, eyelid struggling to stay open. "You have to catch him."

Before Aiden could get over her sense of confusion over what he was saying, Danny was already sleeping.

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"And that was it?" Stella asked, holding a sandwich out to Aiden.

"That was it. Some doctor came in next and shoo-ed me out of the room," the other woman explained.

Stella nodded, leaning back against the plastic chair.

"He'd just waken up… between surgery and the pain killers, he'll probably be a bit confused for a while."

"Or maybe he just doesn't remember," Flack's voice joined them. Mac was beside him.

Out of the blue scrubs and back to one of his suits, the detective looked more like himself now.

"Anything new?" Stella asked the arriving men.

"The team working Danny's case was able to recreate pretty much all of what happened, between Donauh's video tape and the evidence they found in his place," Flack answered. "The only thing missing is Danny's version of events."

"And Donauh?"

"Donauh was a ghost. Joined the FBI ten years ago. Two years after that John Donauh, the person, disappears. No family, no home address, no car, no bank account number, no rented spaces, no place where he could've hidden any signs of his double life. The ID he used to rent a car here in NYC was a fake, trace is still trying to get somewhere with it," Mac explained.

"And the stuff that was found with him?"

"No prints, no trace, no nothing," Flack said. "The man lived in gloves."

"The only thing we could find was on the evidence recovered at Jackson Heights," Mac said. "One print, found inside Margaret Stuton's cell phone. Donauh changed it to detonate the first bomb upon receiving a call from a specific number. His print was lift on the chip he had added for that effect. There was also small traces of saliva, found splattered over the envelop containing Danny's pictures."

"Over? Not on the sealing?" Stella asked, knowing that some people still had the habit of licking their envelops shut.

"No, this was most likely from a sneeze. DNA came back to an unknown female."

"So, no clue on who might've paid Donauh to do this?" Aiden asked between bites. "Other than it's a woman with a cold?"

Mac nodded his head.

"Well, that narrows it down," she mumbled sarcastically.

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"… and the last thing I remember was Donauh pushing that button," Danny concluded, closing his eye. He couldn't remember of ever being this tired in his life.

The team, plus Flack, were gathered around Danny's bed. The hour was late, but the detectives had been allowed to stay a while longer. The lights had been dimmed down, giving the room and its occupants a dark, grave tone.

"Do you want us to go, let you rest for a bit?" Stella asked, seating by his left side. She could tell, just by looking at his face, that the young man was exhausted.

"Nah… I'm good," he mumbled, half asleep. "What happened next, Flack?"

The detective, seating on the other side, exchange a quick look with the others, wandering if it would be wise to tell him. More than that, Flack wandered if he could trust his voice to tell his friend that he'd found him as dead as Donauh.

Stella saw the haunted look in Flack's eyes.

"Maybe we should wait till morning," she said, grabbing Danny's hand. "It's late and the doctors will kill us if we overtire you, so…"

Danny turned his head to the sound of her voice, trying to catch a glimpse of her face beyond his blind spot. Stella, seeing his struggle, left the chair and sat on the bed instead. "Better?"

He looked at her, seeming more alert, his hand squeezing hers in return.

"I want to remember, Stella… I just want to remember."

It wasn't easy for any of them to put themselves in Danny's shoes. Each had had their fair share of dangerous situations, but, one way of the other, they had managed to find some closure to their experiences.

With his mind shielding him from part of his memories, Danny was lacking that feeling, that cork that would bottle all that he'd experienced inside a dark bottle from which he would never drink again. In his mind, the last image he had of Donauh was that of a killer who had succeeded in killing his friends.

"Give it time, Danny," Mac broke the silence with his reassuring voice. "It will come back to you."

Danny just nodded, not because he agreed with Mac, but because he didn't felt strong enough to keep up the argument.

The others watched as his face relaxed as his eye drifted close.

Thinking that he'd finally fallen asleep, the detectives started to quietly leave the room. Mac silently offered to stay. Danny's parents would be there in the morning, and he wanted to be present to answer any questions that they might have.

The older man leaned back on the uncomfortable plastic chair and readied himself to do something he'd swore never to do again since his wife had died. Bedside watch.

"You don't have to stay, you know."

Danny's voice startled the always alert marine.

"You should be asleep," Mac answered.

Seating as he was, in the dark, not really being able to see Danny's face and sure that Danny couldn't see his, Mac felt like he was in church, confessing. "Want me to leave?"

Sometime passed before he heard the whispered 'no'.

"Do you need me to get you something?"

Another long silence followed and Mac figured that the young man had gone back to sleep.

"I owe you and the others an apology," Danny finally said. "I had promised myself that I would never let my reactions put others at risk ever again and I know I promise you tha…"

Mac's hand on his arm made him stop.

"What are you talking about?" Mac asked. He could see Danny's heart beat, glowing in spiked green lines on the monitor above the bed. From the way it had accelerated, Mac could tell how important and stressful this was to Danny. "You can't possibly be blaming yourself for Donauh's actions."

"I'm not," Danny whispered, clearing his throat. "I'm blaming myself for my own actions. If you hadn't found out the bomb when you did, me attacking Donauh would've only resulted in blowing you guys up… I put you all in danger."

Since the moment he had watched and heard what had happened in those few minutes after Danny attacked Donauh, Mac was sure this moment would be happening at some point soon.

"Donauh was going to detonate that bomb no matter what you did, Danny," Mac informed the other man. "When I saw the amount of evidence that he'd left behind in that bunker, at first I thought he'd been sloppy. But then I realized that he left it there to keep us busy, to keep our attention away from the hidden bomb. That bomb was his safe guard, his way to destroy the evidence he was forced to leave behind. There was nothing you could've done to stop that."

The silence between them was only broken by the soft beeping coming from the monitors. The sound was quieter now, almost relaxed.

"So, we're good then?"

Mac had no idea if Danny's choice of words had been intentional or pure chance.

He could still remember the young man's face the last time he'd asked him the exact same question, less than a week ago. Mac had been trying to teach a lesson to the younger CSI, but he hadn't missed the hurt and shame that crossed Danny's eyes then. He'd come to see him, looking for approval for his actions and he had been met with coldness.

Only then had Mac truly felt the weight of having someone looking up to you. He could feel the same weight baring him down again. It felt like a warm blanket over his shoulders.

Mac smile, squeezing Danny's hand.

"We'll be having a conversation about the many reasons why we don't jump towards guns," he said, half serious, half joking. "But we're good, Danny, everything's good."

Mac could feel the young man's hand relaxing inside his, allowing his body finally back in to sleep.

"Just don't do anything like this again, ok?" Mac added.

Danny smiled in his sleep.

"Never again, Mac, never again."

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It was hard to believe that a little over 24 hours had gone by. People had complained about their uneventful lives, people had lost theirs without even realizing why.

The world had turned around itself, leaving some lives exactly the same. Others had been changed forever.

Either way, no one had taken notice.

Central Park was mostly deserted. The rain might've looked romantic in the movies, but in there, at that hour, it was cold and it left little desire in people's hearts to go strolling down the Park's soaked paths.

In a city where everyone minded their own business, no one took notice of the woman making her way through the Park's green avenues. At a distance, she was nothing more than the grey blur of her overcoat. Her eyes were covered with dark glasses even though the sun's light was so hidden that it couldn't possible reach her and the rest of her head was partially hidden by her blue umbrella.

She was moving slowly, making time. The man that was supposed to meet her there was running late. Inside her purse was an envelop filled with money. His last payment.

And if a man moved only by his own greed wouldn't show up to collect his money, then there was only one assumption that she could make. The killer had failed. Her revenge had gone unserved.

Making her decision, the woman left the Park in hurried steps and hauled a cab, losing herself in the streets of NYC.

The end.

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Well, this officially the longest and the last chapter of this story. I just have a one confession and a few thank you-s to make.

Confession: I've never been to NYC, I've never even set foot in the USA, so if any of the streets, places and distances I've described in NYC don't match, don't blame me, blame Wikipedia. If they do match, blame them all the same.

Thank you, to all of you who've reviewed in such a kind manner this story and its author: This was my first try at CSI:NY fanfiction and you guys made it worth it, so thank you!

And I do have to say, this is a personal record for me… one story, one month :D


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